1077185 - [e10s] "RequestPolicy" addon does not update its toolbar button's "Blocked destinations" list

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Extension Compatibility, defect)

Description

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Justin, your add-on seems to be broken with multiprocess Firefox (e10s). If you have any questions about e10s support, just drop by the #e10s IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org. MDN also has a good introduction:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Working_with_multiprocess_Firefox

RequestPolicy's Request Log shows URLs being blocked, but the addon's toolbar button menu does not update its "Blocked destinations" list when e10s is enabled.

AMO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/

Comment 1

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

The developer has been notified through AMO.

Comment 2

[Johannes Pfrang [:johnp]]

The developer stated here[1] that he may not continue work on this project and it got picked up by the Open-Source community and re-released as RequestPolicyContinued[2]. By now, even the official website[3] links to the new add-on. Therefore I don't think the original add-on will be updated to be e10s compatible and am posting here for those that are not aware of the recent developments and the fork of the project.

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/requestpolicy-discuss/7S9Qbep0d50/sjjVwqE69vwJ
[2] https://requestpolicycontinued.github.io/
[3] https://www.requestpolicy.com/

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Johannes: Thanks for the background information.

Jorge: The new RequestPolicyContinued add-on is not on AMO and, from their website, it's unclear whether that is a goal. When e10s rides the Firefox trains to Aurora, should we mark the unmaintained RequestPolicy add-on on AMO as incompatible with that Firefox version? What is AMO's policy for blocking or hiding broken add-ons on AMO?

Comment 4

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I marked the existing versions of RequestPolicy as incompatible and also removed the add-on from the featured list, since I don't want to give too much exposure to an add-on that appears to be abandoned. If e10s makes it to beta without any changes in RequestPolicy, I will also downgrade the add-on to preliminarily approved in order to further reduce its visibility.

Comment 5

[Martin Kimmerle]

Hello Chris and Jorge,

I'd like to inform you that
(a) I'm working on getting RequestPolicy compatible with e10s. It'll be a
    bootstrapped extension as well. [1]
(b) I will upload "RequestPolicy Continued" to AMO asap [2]. I suppose it will
    be on AMO still in January. That extension will have a different ID though,
    as I don't have admin access to the original addon on AMO.

As the original developer (Justin) stated that he won't work on RequestPolicy at
all [3], you might consider contacting me in any concern.

Some additional information: Note that the version the RPC Team is currently
working on is still beta. In 2012 Justin did many changes for a new `1.0`
version, compared to the `0.5.x` version on AMO, but also introduced several
compatibility issues which I'm working on to solve [4].

[1] https://github.com/RequestPolicyContinued/requestpolicy/issues/489
[2] https://github.com/RequestPolicyContinued/requestpolicy/issues/543
[3] https://github.com/RequestPolicyContinued/requestpolicy/issues/525#issuecomment-66659238
[4] https://github.com/RequestPolicyContinued/requestpolicy/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Acompatibility+

Comment 6

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Thanks, Martin! I'm watching your RPC issue #543 to keep up to date on your AMO progress. When RPC is live on AMO, we can close this bug as fixed.

Comment 7

[Martin Kimmerle]

Alright Chris. However, I think that getting a stable version of RPC – whether on AMO or not – is not likely possible until 2015-02-24, the release date of Firefox 36. As E10s won't migrate into Fx36 stable, do you think it's possible to delay RP's incompatibility on AMO? I'd be very pleased. Fx 38 (release date 2015-05-19) seem to be a realistic date.

Nevertheless, I'm trying to get RPC on AMO asap, but I can't promise it'll happen in January.

Comment 8

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Martin: thanks for the heads up. e10s might advance to Aurora 38 to get more testers, but it won't advance to the Beta channel until Beta 40 or so.

Jorge: can you push back RequestPolicy Continued's incompatible version in AMO?

Comment 9

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I pushed it back to 38.

Comment 10

[Martin Kimmerle]

Thank you Chris and Jorge!

Comment 11

[Martin Kimmerle]

Hello again!

I would like to request another push-back regarding the AMO-compatibility of RequestPolicy. The obvious reason is that RPC still isn't on AMO – sadly –, but independently from that I'd really like to have the RP addon on AMO as long as possible. Why? Even if RPC was on AMO already, its current status is IMO not yet ready for tens of thousands of users switching from the old addon.

I understand very clearly that AMO maintainers want to remove addons that are incompatible and unmaintained. However, as RPC will be the direct successor of RP, that addon isn't really "unmaintained", is it?

I'm looking forward to your answers!

Comment 12

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I pushed back the override for Request Policy. I have a couple of questions:

1) Is there going to be a new version for Request Policy in the near future?

2) Are you submitting a new version of Request Policy Continued soon? The last submission was rejected a while ago, so I want to make sure you're aware of the current status of the extension.

Comment 13

[Martin Kimmerle]

Hi Jorge!

1) Speaking of „RequestPolicy“ aka RP [1], there won't be any update in near future. The developer, Justin Samuel, stopped development. So actually all users should switch to „RequestPolicy Continued“ aka RPC [2] sooner or later. The RPC development focuses on the 1.0 version, whereas the current RP version is 0.5.28. RPC also provides the 0.5 version to be able to push updates. Speaking of development, I will definitely maintain RPC in the "near future".

2) Yes, the addon got rejected some days ago. Today I've fixed the issues and uploaded a new version. Now I need to await the review again.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy-continued/

Comment 14

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

RPC is up to date on AMO, so I think this bug should be WONTFIX for the original RP.

Comment 15

[:shell escalante]

tagging this as recommend - as we have a few add-ons that we need to address where they are replacing with different add-ons and need a way to direct users to new one.

Comment 16

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

With Firefox 57 only WebExtensions are permitted and are, by default, e10s compatible.