1235835 - firefox installer version metadata is wrong

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

This was reported at https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/3yrabl/is_there_a_reason_the_32bit_and_64bit_have_the/cyg7974, and I verified it myself.

For example, the Firefox 43.0.3 installer shows a "File version" of "4.42.0.0" in the Details tab of Properties. This doesn't seem to even line up with Gecko version, so I don't know where it's from.

The installed files are versioned correctly, however. Eg: firefox.exe and xul.dll start with "43.0.3", NSS libs use the NSS version.

Comment 1

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

The metadata that ends up on the installer originates from our copy of the 7-Zip SFX module, which is the code that initially runs when the installer is started, so it gets to supply the file properties. The version number that you're seeing is a 7-Zip version number. We use that code to extract the compressed file containing the actual installer (which has the correct metadata, but nobody ever sees that because it's run out of a temporary directory).
To fix this, we'll have to get the metadata on the 7-Zip stub updated; we already make a copy of that file during the build so that we can run UPX on it before we actually use it, so what we need to do is update that copy.

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

The installer's version number has never followed the Firefox version. Note that we also have several binaries in the install directory that don't follow this as well. I'm ok with this change but there are tons of other bugs that are way more important than this and afaic this is wontfix.