1382546 - Files are Cached and not refreshed on Disable/Enable/Restart

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(WebExtensions :: General, defect)

Description

[erosman [:erosman]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0
Build ID: 20170623154118

Steps to reproduce:

Ref:
Firefox 55.0.b5
Under-development addons
Installation:  by adding a file to reference the addon's location folder on HD (e.g. C:\Users\***\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*****.default\extensions)


It seems changes to "/_locales/en/messages.json" do not have any effect even after disabling/enabling the addon or restarting Firefox.

The option left was to remove the addon, restart, and reinstall the addon; for the changes to "messages.json" to take effect.

I am not sure if any other files are affected but it seem Firefox is caching these files and the cache does not get refreshed.

I do not recall having this issue on FF < 55

............

On another issue (which may be related!?!), by mistake, I entered "Ctrl+Shift+i" under "commands" in manifest.json

Addon did not load and logged an error to the console. However, the addon vanished from about:addons
I could neither uninstall or install it anymore.

I had to manually delete it from about:config (browser.uiCustomization.state & extensions.webextensions.uuids) in order to be able to reinstall it.

PS. if this issue is not related, let me know and I will open a separate bug.

Comment 1

[erosman [:erosman]]

I am having the same problem with 'manifest.json'

After adding "storage", to the "permissions", I still get "TypeError: chrome.storage is undefined"
Enable/Disable, restart, shut down, start has no effect.

I was forced to uninstall the addon, restart (so it completes the uninstall), shutdown again, add the reference file, restart again; just to get it to recognised the new permission.


It seems JSON files are cached on installation and never updated.

It is unclear if that applies only to addons that are installed in aforementioned manner, or to all types of installations.

Comment 2

[erosman [:erosman]]

FF55.0b11 (firefox-55.0.en-US.win32-add-on-devel.installer.exe) is the same.

The JSON cache was updated on new installation of Firefox but the subsequent changes are not reflected.

Comment 3

[erosman [:erosman]]

I tested "firefox-56.0a1.en-US.win32.installer.exe" and it was the same.

Comment 4

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

If you want changes that you make to an extension to take effect, you either need to reinstall it, or use something like the Reload feature in about:debugging.

Comment 5

[erosman [:erosman]]

The Reload feature in about:debugging is for temporary addons.

These are the addons that I work on all the time. Previously restarting the addon (disable/enable) updated the addon and its content so we could continue working and developing on the addon that are installed locally and make development changes.

Has this feature been removed?
How can we work on addons that are not installed temporarily?
Installing multiple addons on every Firefox restart is impractical.

Comment 6

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

To the extent that there ever was such a feature, it was removed in bug 1356826, when we disabled the recursive scan of unpacked extension directories that flushed the startup cache.

If you want to change add-ons during development, I suggest that you use something like `web-ext run` or install a separate, temporary copy from about:debugging. The other alternative is to run Firefox with the -purgecaches flag. We won't be re-enabling the recursive startup scan, though.

Comment 7

[erosman [:erosman]]

I see... thanks for the explanation
I can see from bug 1356826 that it was introduced in FF55 (hence my confusion)

I tried starting Firefox with the -purgecaches but it didn't refresh those JSONs.

I also tried restart --nocache from developer toolbar but that didn't work either.