I've only checked these in Fedora 23, but since the man page has not been updated in a long time, these issues are probably true for older and newer Fedora packages as well. The commandline options described in the Firefox man page are out-of-date. Particularly: `-remote` was removed in Firefox 39.0. See <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options#-remote_remote_command> `-private-toggle` is no longer available... I think. I can't find anything that explicitly states that it was removed, but it's no longer listed on the Command Line Options page linked above, nor in the `--help` text, and doesn't seem to do anything. `--no-xshm` and `--xim-preedit` X11-specific Firefox options are no longer listed on the Mozilla wiki page linked above. Perhaps they have been removed from Firefox as well? `-devtools` is missing from the man page and the the Mozilla Command Line Options page linked above, but still appears in the `--help` text, and does still work. (It opens the developer tools panel when Firefox launches.) The `--help` text also lists options `--recording` and `--recording-output`, but these do not appear in the man page, nor are they documented on the Mozilla wiki page.
I noticed this issue while editing the man page to suit a package I'm working on for Firefox Developer Edition. So after you weigh in with your thoughts about the issues here, I could send a patch that updates the man page.
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man firefox still shows -remote in F26.
> `-private-toggle` is no longer available... and doesn't seem to do anything. Correction: For unsupported command line options like this, Firefox falls back to opening a new (normal) window. So `firefox -private-toggle` doesn't do nothing, but it doesn't toggle private browsing mode either.
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 26 development cycle. Changing version to '26'.
I can confirm this bug; on Fedora 26 the manpage advertises a date of August 07, 2001 (!) The man page mentiones the -private flag, which has been replaced by --private-window quite some time ago and to make matters worse, -private actually _breaks the private mode_ until firefox gets restarted. The report on Mozilla's bugtracker has been dismissed, because the man page is apparently distro-provided. (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1381866)
Thanks for your report, do you mind to provide an updated man page we can ship?
Created attachment 1360621 [details] proposed man page for firefox-dev I haven't looked at this or worked on my Firefox Developer Edition package in a while, so you might want to double check this. But here's the man page I have, which at least incorporates the changes I mentioned in my original post. Note this man page also changed the package and binary names to suit the RPM I was experimenting with, so you would at least want to change those back to plain "firefox".
Andrew, your man page is also not up-to-date. I'm working on merging the information from `firefox --help` in at the moment.
Created attachment 1360974 [details] Proposed man page for Firefox (info from `firefox --help`) Done. Any feedback appreciated!
Thanks, we'll add it to next release.
Created attachment 1362629 [details] updated man page for firefox(1) just noticed that the "see also" section mentiones a man page that does not exist. removed it. stoked to see this happen; firefox really deserves an up-to-date manual
Added to firefox-57.0.1-2, Thanks!
Created attachment 1589159 [details] man page updated 2019
I've updated the manual since there were some changes in the last 1½ years. It appears I can't reopen the bug, so I've needinfo'd -- apologies if that's rude.
I would say it would have been better to just submit a new ticket than reopen one a similar one that was solved a year and a half ago... Or, if you have a Fedora account, you could submit a pull request to https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/firefox But since you're here already, I guess I can reopen it for you. The updated manpage looks reasonable to me. Nothing radical, so it should be an easy merge :)
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora Linux 37 development cycle. Changing version to 37.
(In reply to Tobias from comment #14) > Created attachment 1589159 [details] > man page updated 2019 Added to Firefox/Fedora, Thanks.