Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?
Posted: 2017-12-18, 11:15
Can I safely copy my profile between Firefox, Pale Moon and Basilisk?
In one word: NO! Don't ever do this.
Firefox, Basilisk and Pale Moon are different applications. Although they are based on the same family of platform code, there are massive differences between the profiles of Pale Moon, Firefox (and derivatives) and Basilisk. Even if just looking at Firefox itself, Mozilla has made breaking changes in their profile from version to version, especially in the 50-series, and these changes are only ever migrated one way, making it incompatible with the previous release.
In addition, you will be copying across data that would not apply to the target application.
A prime example of this is the extension blocklist: When Mozilla-style applications download the blocklist from the server it is specified to download from, it saves a copy of this blocklist in your profile.. When you copy a profile from Pale Moon or Firefox or Waterfox. Your profile will contain a blocklist.xml file from that application. That blocklist will not apply to the application you are copying it to, and you end up with extensions being blocked in your browser because the blocklist in your profile says to block them (because what you may have installed on Basilisk is likely a version that is incompatible with Pale Moon and the other way around, and specific versions and types of extensions get blocked on one application but not another, both ways).
If this happened to you, you MUST delete the cached blocklist so that the target application can use the one baked into the application as an initial list until it is time to download a new version from the server.
So, once again, It is VERY inadvisable to copy a profile from Pale Moon to Basilisk, Basilisk to pale Moon, Firefox to Basilisk, Waterfox to ... (you get my drift) because of the radically different platforms and profile formats. It is also a bad idea to specifically copy a profile from Firefox 55 or higher because of incompatible changes to the profile that WILL cause issues.
These profiles cannot really be shared problem-free between applications. This is especially true when it comes to Pale Moon and Basilisk which are radically different; as radically different as Pale Moon 27's profiles are compared to Pale Moon 26's profiles.
In addition, when going cross-application, many, many important preferences may not be what they should be. This issue will be reduced (but not vanish entirely) once Pale Moon is ported to UXP, but they are still different applications, with different use cases and as a result: different default preferences.
It is strongly recommended (understatement) you keep your profiles separate to prevent problems for you and headaches for the community: start with a new profile on a new application, and export/import data using built-in and extension methods.
If you run into issues and you have copied a profile across from a different application, we cannot reasonably provide support for your setup. If you have issues in this setup, please create a new profile, and properly import or re-create your bookmarks/preferences/etc. before asking for help.
In one word: NO! Don't ever do this.
Firefox, Basilisk and Pale Moon are different applications. Although they are based on the same family of platform code, there are massive differences between the profiles of Pale Moon, Firefox (and derivatives) and Basilisk. Even if just looking at Firefox itself, Mozilla has made breaking changes in their profile from version to version, especially in the 50-series, and these changes are only ever migrated one way, making it incompatible with the previous release.
In addition, you will be copying across data that would not apply to the target application.
A prime example of this is the extension blocklist: When Mozilla-style applications download the blocklist from the server it is specified to download from, it saves a copy of this blocklist in your profile.. When you copy a profile from Pale Moon or Firefox or Waterfox. Your profile will contain a blocklist.xml file from that application. That blocklist will not apply to the application you are copying it to, and you end up with extensions being blocked in your browser because the blocklist in your profile says to block them (because what you may have installed on Basilisk is likely a version that is incompatible with Pale Moon and the other way around, and specific versions and types of extensions get blocked on one application but not another, both ways).
If this happened to you, you MUST delete the cached blocklist so that the target application can use the one baked into the application as an initial list until it is time to download a new version from the server.
So, once again, It is VERY inadvisable to copy a profile from Pale Moon to Basilisk, Basilisk to pale Moon, Firefox to Basilisk, Waterfox to ... (you get my drift) because of the radically different platforms and profile formats. It is also a bad idea to specifically copy a profile from Firefox 55 or higher because of incompatible changes to the profile that WILL cause issues.
These profiles cannot really be shared problem-free between applications. This is especially true when it comes to Pale Moon and Basilisk which are radically different; as radically different as Pale Moon 27's profiles are compared to Pale Moon 26's profiles.
In addition, when going cross-application, many, many important preferences may not be what they should be. This issue will be reduced (but not vanish entirely) once Pale Moon is ported to UXP, but they are still different applications, with different use cases and as a result: different default preferences.
It is strongly recommended (understatement) you keep your profiles separate to prevent problems for you and headaches for the community: start with a new profile on a new application, and export/import data using built-in and extension methods.
If you run into issues and you have copied a profile across from a different application, we cannot reasonably provide support for your setup. If you have issues in this setup, please create a new profile, and properly import or re-create your bookmarks/preferences/etc. before asking for help.