In Ubuntu version of chromium-browser, there’s a nice command-line option “–temp-profile”, it starts Chromium with a disposable profile. It’s very useful for developing purposes. Does anyone knows if there’s a similar option on Fedora’s chromium or chromium-freeworld? I’ve tried with the same command line option, but it simply doesn’t works.
In the chromium browser shipped with Fedora, there is not such option.
In the package shipped with Ubuntu, there is such option.
However, as far as I can see, this option is not a Chromium option, but on Ubuntu it is provided by the bash script that actually launches Chromium. It is a wrapper around another option.
If you look at the Ubuntu’s (and Debian) package, for instance the source package, there is a script called chromium-browser.sh
The --temp-profile option is provided here.
...
want_temp_profile=0
...
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
case "$1" in
...
--temp-profile )
want_temp_profile=1
shift ;;
...
if [ $want_temp_profile -eq 1 ] ; then
TEMP_PROFILE=`mktemp -d`
CHROMIUM_FLAGS="$CHROMIUM_FLAGS --user-data-dir=$TEMP_PROFILE"
fi
...
$LIBDIR/$APPNAME $CHROMIUM_FLAGS "$@"
rm -rf $TEMP_PROFILE
...
So, the --temp-profile option is a wrapper for the Chromium’s --user-data-dir= actual option, that is documented in the man page, plus an mktemp command.
You’re right, they do it through a custom bash script. However, I don’t like to have some bash script somewhere just for that function. So, I’ve replicated this using a simple desktop file on my local home folder. This is a quick script, if anyone needs the same; just copy and paste it on a terminal. It will copy system’s chromium-freeworld desktop file on your local applications folder, and add the command for Temp Profile. After that, reloads gnome-shell to reflect the change: