Where is prefsCleaner?

[zdat]

Unless I'm an idiot, I don't see where I'm supposed to download prefsCleaner?

On 3.5-prefsCleaner the only link is to arkenfox-cleanup.js

Is arkenfox-cleanup.js prefsCleaner?

I have an old prefsCleaner.bat in my profile but I have no idea where I got that from.

Any help? Thanks.

[Thorin-Oakenpants]

same place you got your user.js -> https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/3.4-Apply-&-Update-&-Maintain#-apply

[notDavid]

Hey @Thorin-Oakenpants , noob question, would you please be so kind to clarify what the difference is between the arkenfox-cleanup.js script and prefsCleaner.sh script ?

Could not find that anywhere in the Wiki. Thank you!

[9ao9ai9ar]

@notDavid Having recently rewritten both prefsCleaner.sh and updater.sh in #1908, here's my take: the arkenfox-cleanup.js is to be run manually by the user, as proper automation, I think, requires installation of a WebDriver. The prefs.js cleaner scripts, on the other hand, can be run in a cron job^* without any prior setup, but relies on hackish detection of all the prefs present in the user.js file, while in the case of arkenfox-cleanup.js the list of deprecated/removed prefs is maintained for Firefox 91+.

^{* There is still a problem in the shell script version that if Firefox is running it'll hang/loop indefinitely, but that could be fixed easily.}

@Thorin-Oakenpants If my pull request passes the review and is merged, I can help with updating the shell script parts of the wiki, too.

[notDavid]

That's great @9ao9ai9ar , thank you very much for the detailed explanation;

PS. Would it not be a good idea, to make the updater.sh script, also fetch the latest prefsCleaner script ?

[9ao9ai9ar]

@notDavid The main function of the updater is to update the arkenfox user.js file to a new version and/or append the override prefs. The self updating aspect pertains only to the running script, and it is not always mandatory or even recommended to use both the updater and the prefsCleaner scripts.

For example, if you are on the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR), it is recommended that you only run the prefsCleaner and not the updater (discussed in #1733). On the other hand, the prefsCleaner only removes deprecated and removed prefs that have been mentioned/flipped by the arkenfox user.js in the past, so you may want to take a scorched-earth approach that is starting afresh with a new profile from time to time (discussed in #1720), which might mean that you only use the updater (with the -l option and is itself located somewhere outside the Firefox profile directories) and not the prefsCleaner.

As to your original question, #1669 may be the official answer, which seems to suggest that these days arkenfox-cleanup.js and prefsCleaner.sh are interchangeable.

[notDavid]

Thank you for explaining @9ao9ai9ar , that's good info.

The self updating aspect pertains only to the running script, and it is not always mandatory or even recommended

I understand people often do not need to execute the script;

However, would it not be good to update / download it, so people have the latest version - regardless whether they will execute it or not?

Currently, you would have to go manually search for it. Why not just include it and keep it up to date automatically?

[9ao9ai9ar]

However, would it not be good to update / download it, so people have the latest version - regardless whether they will execute it or not?

That may depend on the user. If they do not use a feature, would the additional file, storage and network bandwidth, however miniscule they are, be considered good or just extra noise?

Currently, you would have to go manually search for it. Why not just include it and keep it up to date automatically?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by having to go manually search for it. You could either git clone the whole arkenfox repo and periodically pull from master to have everything up-to-date, or download the updater script (and optionally the prefsCleaner script) and use it to update both the user.js file and itself. The -l and -p options enable you to keep the script(s) in one location and have the arkenfox configuration applied to any Firefox profile.

The latter usage pattern also highlights the benefit of having a single script that combines the features of both the user.js updater and the prefs.js cleaner: it cuts the minimum file count for a complete setup from 2 to 1. Not to mention that this might also shed off some lines of shared code and provide an opportunity to redefine the interfaces, e.g. make the shell script options more idiomatic, unify the feature sets and make the behaviors of the Unix shell scripts and Windows batch files more consistent, etc.

But that is pursuing perfectionism. In any case, what we currently have already works quite well for the majority of cases, and any further major rework of the shell scripts may be considered counterproductive, even more so when this project is slated to be deprecated sometime in the future.