On debian testing after a dist-upgrade, firefox exits immediately with
the exit status 1.

#ifdef rant

I'm sure the documentation describing when this behaviour occurs is
widely available[0], but silly me hasn't been able to find it.

[0] on the dark side of the moon[1]
[1] scratched into a rock[2]
[2] backwards[3]
[3] in greek[4]

#endif

ufo@roestbak:~$ firefox
ufo@roestbak:~$ echo $?
1

Nuking the plugins directory doesn't help

gdb doesn't reveal much:

ufo@roestbak:~$ firefox -g
GNU gdb 6.4.90-debian
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain
conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i486-linux-gnu"...Using host libthread_db
library "/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libthread_db.so.1".

*snip* fooling around with gdb

(gdb) break nsAppRunner.cpp:1668
Breakpoint 18 at 0x807c439: file nsAppRunner.cpp, line 1668.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin -a firefox
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread -1490376256 (LWP 11347)]
[Switching to Thread -1490376256 (LWP 11347)]

Breakpoint 18, XRE_main (argc=3, argv=0xafee7484, aAppData=0x8908a60)
at nsAppRunner.cpp:1668
1668 nsAppRunner.cpp: No such file or directory.
in nsAppRunner.cpp
(gdb) bt
#0 XRE_main (argc=3, argv=0xafee7484, aAppData=0x8908a60)
at nsAppRunner.cpp:1668
#1 0x08078587 in main (argc=-1343327384, argv=0xafee7368)
at nsBrowserApp.cpp:61
#2 0xa738aeb0 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#3 0x080784d1 in _start () at ../../../../dist/include/xpcom/nsCOMPtr.h:268
(gdb) u
1669 in nsAppRunner.cpp
(gdb) u
1673 in nsAppRunner.cpp
(gdb) u
1674 in nsAppRunner.cpp
(gdb) bt
#0 XRE_main (argc=3, argv=0xafee7484, aAppData=0x8908a60)
at nsAppRunner.cpp:1674
#1 0x08078587 in main (argc=0, argv=0x0) at nsBrowserApp.cpp:61
#2 0xa738aeb0 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#3 0x080784d1 in _start () at ../../../../dist/include/xpcom/nsCOMPtr.h:268
(gdb) u
1677 in nsAppRunner.cpp
(gdb) u
1688 in nsAppRunner.cpp
(gdb) u
542 ../../dist/include/xpcom/nsCOMPtr.h: No such file or directory.
in ../../dist/include/xpcom/nsCOMPtr.h
(gdb) u
main (argc=1, argv=0x1) at nsBrowserApp.cpp:62
62 nsBrowserApp.cpp: No such file or directory.
in nsBrowserApp.cpp
(gdb) u
0xa738aeb0 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
(gdb) u
0xa738aeb3 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
(gdb) u

Program exited with code 01.
(gdb)


This is odd. Context of nsBrowserApp.cpp:1688
static void BuildVersion(nsCString &aBuf)
{
aBuf.Assign(gAppData->version);
aBuf.Append('_'); // <---- line 1688
aBuf.Append(gAppData->buildID);
aBuf.Append('/');
aBuf.AppendLiteral(GRE_BUILD_ID);
}

What the hell?