1006109 - Add-ons compatibility check should not occur in safe mode

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[bugzilla]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:29.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/29.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140428193603

Steps to reproduce:

1. Upgrade firefox from any version to newer version (say firefox 29).
2. Close firefox
3. Run firefox in safemode right after the upgrade


Actual results:

firefox performs add-on compatibility test


Expected results:

Add-on compatibility test should not be run in safe-mode

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to bugzilla from comment #0)
> Add-on compatibility test should not be run in safe-mode

Honest question: why not? :-)

Comment 2

[bugzilla]

Hey Gijs,

Thanks for looking into the issue.

 If I want to start firefox without add-on's, why should it try to check for compatiability for things it should not be caring about? Isn't the main point of safe-mode not worrying about add-ons?

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

I suspect fixing this correctly might not be easy (because it'll need to remember to check for compatibility the next time you don't start in safe mode), and it's somewhat of an edgecase, so I'm trying to understand why you think it's problematic that it does check for compatibility.

Dave, is this something which is planned/possible/makes sense to you?

Comment 4

[bugzilla]

Hi Gijs,

I agree that this is an edge case. I would not have noticed it or got annoyed by it till yesterday :)

I updated ff at home, closed it and went to a hotel. There when I tried to connect, it started doing the compatibility check. But I had to login to the hotel site first for internet and so it started creating a chicken and egg problem as the check was taking forever and wouldnt let me login for it to finish. At this point I figured if I start in safe-mode I don't have to worry about add-ons and that obviously did not work either :)

Hope that makes sense.

Why is it hard to set the flag for doing the check at next restart? The update installer does it today.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to bugzilla from comment #4)
> Hi Gijs,
> 
> I agree that this is an edge case. I would not have noticed it or got
> annoyed by it till yesterday :)
> 
> I updated ff at home, closed it and went to a hotel. There when I tried to
> connect, it started doing the compatibility check. But I had to login to the
> hotel site first for internet and so it started creating a chicken and egg
> problem as the check was taking forever and wouldnt let me login for it to
> finish. At this point I figured if I start in safe-mode I don't have to
> worry about add-ons and that obviously did not work either :)
> 
> Hope that makes sense.
> 
> Why is it hard to set the flag for doing the check at next restart? The
> update installer does it today.

I suspect (but Dave will know for sure) that it's based on the pref we keep that indicates the last version of Firefox your profile was used on. Not writing to that pref in safe mode (and disregarding whether it was "old" and therefore we need to check for add-on compat) would also trigger other things to re-run on the next non-safe-mode run, like the "what's new" page and/or the "tour" that people see when they update.

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Gijs analysis is spot on, this would be more work to fix than it is worth I think.