Open Fossil ui page in an existing Firefox instance as a new tab

(1) By anonymous on 2025-05-20 15:10:31 [link] [source]

I am doing the following from within scite (via SQLite):

.system "cd\\dat\\fsl\\irc && \\utl\\fossil setting web-browser C:\\pa\\FFP\\FirefoxPortable.exe --new-tab"

.system "cd\\dat\\fsl\\irc && \\utl\\fossil setting web-browser"

Shows all good:

journal_mode
------------
memory      
web-browser              (local)     C:\pa\FFP\FirefoxPortable.exe --new-tab

But when trying it out I still get the message that Firefox is already running and I need to close it first. The culprit with my interpretation looks to be Firefox Portable not passing on the parameter as seen below when running from the CLI:

C:\Dat\fsl\irc>cd\dat\fsl\irc && \utl\fossil ui
Temporary files: D:\Temp\fossil\fossil_server_P8104*
Listening for HTTP requests on TCP port 8104
Launch webbrowser: C:\pa\FFP\FirefoxPortable.exe --new-tab "http://localhost:8104/" &
Type Ctrl-C to stop the HTTP server
^C

Any ideas...
Thanks
Philip

(2) By Richard Hipp (drh) on 2025-05-20 21:55:26 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

By default, SQLite should start "fossil ui" as a new tab in your existing browser by running "start "" "http://localhost:8080/"". This should accomplish what you want automatically (no setting changes are required) as long as Firefox is set as your default browser. Is that the case? Is Fossil your default web browser?

(3) By Martin Gagnon (mgagnon) on 2025-05-20 22:08:21 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

I guess it's something specific to FirefoxPortable, because with regular Firefox installed on my system, it works properly out of the box, I don't even need to specify --new-tab, it will start a new instance if it's not running, and will start in a new tab if I have an instance already running.

I tried FirefoxPortable and I saw that it doesn't start in background, so the fossil server doesn't really start right away.

To solve the problem, you can use "start", so it will start properly in background.

Example:

fossil set web-browser "start c:\\pa\\ffp\\FirefoxPortable.exe"

I'm not sure how this will works from your "scite" environment, I guess you can just add the "start" in front in your current config.

(4) By anonymous on 2025-05-21 04:49:43 in reply to 2 [link] [source]

It's not set as the default browser, the complete setup is for portability. I am pretty sure it is the FirefoxPortable.exe that is not accepting / passing the Firefox --new-tab option on to Firefox itself.
Will look into your and Martin's suggestions...

Philip

(5) By anonymous on 2025-05-21 11:36:02 in reply to 4 [source]

Letting it rest for now... simply can't get it to work even directly from the command line using all options, plain html file, other URLs, firefoxportable ini settings etc. Same old error:
"Firefox is already running, but is not responding. The old Firefox process must be closed to open a new window."

Ended up in installing another clean FirefoxPortable, configured the Fossil web-browser setting accordingly and using that for now.

Works excellent with the new https://fossil-scm.org/home/help?cmd=/ckout default.

Thanks!
Philip