PWAs close first time opening PWA - relative URL without a base

[spoorun]

Description

During any given session, I open a PWA and it momentarily opens than closes
If I open it a second time (from the menu or app icon but not the command line) it opens correctly
This happens whether the PWA is opened from the command line, the KDE menu, or clicking an icon

When opened from the command line, the following error is given:

/usr/bin/firefoxpwa site launch 01J96HRTE3XC6AW2AQBEFMI7MNMP --protocol %u
error: invalid value '%u' for '--protocol [<PROTOCOL>]': relative URL without a base For more information, try '--help'.

If I remove "%u" from the .desktop file the issue does not occur and the PWA opens correctly first time

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a PWA
2. Restart the system (the error only occurs after a restart not when the PWA has just been installed)
3. Launch the PWA from the menu or icon
   [It flashes up briefly then fails]
4. Launch again
   [It launches correctly]

OR

1. Create a PWA
2. Restart the system (the error only occurs after a restart not when the PWA has just been installed)
3. Launch the PWA from the command line
   [error is shown:[ (error: invalid value '%u' for '--protocol []': relative URL without a base) ]

Workaround

Remove "%U" from the .desktop file for the PWA
The app starts correctly from menu, icon or commandline

Affected Websites

All

Environment

First occurred at least 6 months ago

• Operating system: Manjaro Linux
• System architecture: 64
• Desktop environment: KDE 6.0 - 6.1
• Installation method: AUR
• PWAsForFirefox extension version: 2.11 - 2.12.4
• PWAsForFirefox native version: 2.11 - 2.12.5
• PWAsForFirefox runtime version: 130.0.1 and earlier
• Firefox version: 129 - 131

[filips123]

That may be a KDE bug. %u should be replaced with the URL when launching as a protocol handler, or be empty when launching normally. But I've tried to reproduce it on Manjaro with KDE in a VM and it works fine for me...

[wroyca]

I can confirm that this also happens with GNOME on Fedora 41.

[HappyHippo77]

Happens to me with GNOME on Fedora 41 and on Arch Linux. Seems to be a Linux issue? It's worth noting that occasionally it will work correctly.

[filips123]

Unfortunately, I still can't reproduce it neither on GNOME nor KDE. You can try to launch the desktop entry with gtk-launch FFPWA-ID.desktop and see if there are any errors.

[realDayaa]

Launching with gtk-launch FFPWA-ID.desktop opens the app without errors.

[probablyanewt]

I too have this issue. Manjaro and GNOME. Removing %u from the .desktop doesn't resolve it for me though.

[filips123]

I guess this might be another session-related problem, but I don't konow why it happens and how to fix it.

[probablyanewt]

@filips123 is there a verbose or debug mode I can run it with? I can see if I can get some more info.

[filips123]

You can try to get both the native and runtime logs.

[probablyanewt]

So in more recent updates, the crash occurs less often than it did previously, which makes it harder to poke.

I added the empty DEBUG file in ~/.local/share/firefoxpwa, and so far found the following:

• Running firefoxpwa site launch <id> didn't write anything in the native log files logs.
• I couldn't get the PWAs to crash when launching with the -- --jsconsole flag. I have a couple of dumps from the jsconsole, but I'm not sure how useful they are.
• I did managed to capture an error in the terminal, following a crash, not sure if this is related to the cause, or simply occured because the app crashed however:

###!!! [Parent][DispatchAsyncMessage] Error: PBackgroundIDBFactory::Msg_PBackgroundIDBFactoryRequestConstructor Value error: message was deserialized, but contained an illegal value

• The crashes seem to occur more often when launching from a .desktop in the gnome menu, compared to using the CLI. This is just a gut feeling at the moment though, and may be due to chance.

I'll have another poke tomorrow. I'll see if I can get it to crash again with the -- --jsconsole flag, and may also try building directly from source to see if that makes any difference.

[filips123]

Please update the native program to v2.13.2, run "patch profiles and runtime" from the extension settings and check if this issue happens again. I've fixed some other issue, but it might also be related to this one.

Note that the extension will say that it's outdated, but this is fine until the new version is also reviewed by Mozilla.

[probablyanewt]

I'm on v2.13.2, and ran the patch profiles and runtime from the extension, restarted my pc, but it still crashed first time.

[nemonein]

This also happens for Google Apps. (Keep, Calendar, etc)
I'm on Archlinux with KDE. firefoxpwa 2.13.2, Progressive Web Apps for Firefox is still 2.13.1.

I've found a workaroud(?) for this.
On FirefoxPWA settings, these must be ON.

• Open previous windows and tabs
• Show browser tabs and enable using multi-tabbed web apps

But there's one condition.
You have to close FF by Ctrl+W, not Alt-F4. (With mouse click, just click the tab's X button, not the Window's X.)
If you do it with Alt-F4, you will see duplicated tabs.

[mlncn]

This is happening with me for Harvest (https://example-businessname.harvestapp.com/) but not my other 'apps' (Big Blue Button rooms through https://meet.coop mostly). Can confirm that nemonein's workaround works.