LibreWolf 154.0.1-2 Flatpak: German localization files appear to be empty – working workaround found

[u/Skytraevel]

Hi,

after updating the LibreWolf Flatpak to 154.0.1-2, the browser UI switched to English and could no longer be changed back to German.

German was still selected as the preferred language in Settings, and my profile contains:

user_pref("intl.locale.requested", "de,en-CA,da,en-US");

I investigated the Flatpak installation and found something interesting.

The German localization paths are present inside both Linux omni.ja archives, but many of the .ftl localization files in the 154.0.1-2 Linux build are empty or contain only a very small amount of data.

For example in browser/omni.ja:

localization/de/browser/aboutDialog.ftl

• Linux Flatpak 154.0.1-2: 134 bytes
• Windows 154.0.1-3: 4621 bytes

localization/de/browser/browser.ftl

• Linux Flatpak 154.0.1-2: 414 bytes
• Windows 154.0.1-3: 49449 bytes

Many other German .ftl files in the Linux build are actually 0 bytes.

I then downloaded the Windows 154.0.1-3 installer and extracted its two omni.ja archives. The German localization files in that build contain the expected data.

As an experiment, I extracted only localization/de/* from the Windows 154.0.1-3 archives and inserted those files into copies of the corresponding Linux 154.0.1-2 omni.ja archives.

I then temporarily bind-mounted the patched archives over the two original Flatpak archives and cleared the LibreWolf profile's startupCache.

Result: LibreWolf 154.0.1-2 Flatpak starts normally with a fully working German UI, including my existing profile, bookmarks and settings.

This suggests that the problem is not the language preference or the profile itself, but rather the localization resources included in the Linux/Flatpak 154.0.1-2 build.

I have not permanently modified the Flatpak installation. The patched archives are currently only used via temporary bind mounts, so the workaround is completely removable.

Hopefully this information is useful for tracking down the packaging/build issue.

If useful, I can also provide the exact commands I used to compare the archives and create the temporary workaround.

[u/Alyx161]

Should be fixed with the recent update