Stop using GetNativePath on Windows #1876

nsIFile::GetNativePath is a bit of a footgun, because it returns char* -- this is a problem because it depends on the system code page what is a valid path and what is not, which can lead to problems if non-ascii paths are encountered for the installation or profile, since it breaks on unicode paths. This is primarily an issue on Windows since Linux (and assuming Solaris) defaults to UTF-8 which would mostly avoid the pitfalls of char* vs. code pages.

This can lead to problems like encountered in Topic 27829

For extension compatibility, we should not remove it from nsIFile, but at the very least we should stop using it ourselves.

See MoonchildProductions/GRE#3057 for previous work done.

I've ported the patches from GRE but this doesn't solve the underlying issue with running it from a path with extended UTF-8 characters in it on Windows, which was the whole reason I started on this (it's on a separate branch). So this needs a closer look when there's enough time to do so (or if someone feels like they want to do the research).

There seems to be a way to kinda select UTF-8 for use with all the -A apis.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/globalizing/use-utf8-code-page

Just by adding this to the application manifest.

  <application>
    <windowsSettings>
      <activeCodePage xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2019/WindowsSettings">UTF-8</activeCodePage>
    </windowsSettings>
  </application>

With this the native paths could switch to UTF8 as in linux.

CP_ACP equates to CP_UTF8 only if running on Windows Version 1903 (May 2019 Update) or above and the ActiveCodePage property described above is set to UTF-8. Otherwise, it honors the legacy system code page. We recommend using CP_UTF8 explicitly.

This means CP_ACP can still be used and it would be a kinda trivial change.

Ah, Nice find!
Could you please check if placing Pale Moon in an extended UTF-8 named path works with that setting (currently crashes)

Seems to work, No crash. Sqliteadmin was able to use a DB-Name using Kyrillic and FireFTP was able to copy some files, got some connection issues but I think thats a problem on server side.

grafik.png

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I would say it works.

I created a PR.

grafik.png

177 KiB