1391401 - Limit add-ons loaded into Firefox for Android

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: Android, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Andy McKay]

This is a repeat of the work for Firefox Desktop. Create the pref (if its not there already), default it to true, do not allow it to be changed on beta and release.

At this time we do not expect to do any other work on the add-ons manager in Android.

Comment 1

[Kev Needham [:kev]]

Agreed. Plan has been to remove the ability to load legacy addons in 57 for Android, and we need to land it. Simple change of disabling legacy addons w/57.

Comment 2

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

ni EPM Wesly to get it into sprint planning

Comment 3

[Wesly Huang (EPM)]

Andy, sorry for few simple questions:

1. There is a Trello card (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs) with bug 1336576 tracking related work, should I assume this Bug 1391401 is dedicated for Android so the right one to replace bug 1336576 on that Trello card (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs), as the card is titled "Fennec"?

2. Does your team plan to take this bug like the other add-on tasks, or you expect anything to be done by the front-end team in Taipei?

3. I don't have the background about the work, why should we have a pref in Nightly and this pref shouldn't be changed on beta and release? We intend to leave a switch in only Nightly to let people turn on the legacy add-on support? (i.e., to disable the limit of legacy)

Thanks.

Comment 4

[Andy McKay]

(In reply to Wesly Huang (Fennec Frontend/Firefox EPM) from comment #3)
> Andy, sorry for few simple questions:
> 
> 1. There is a Trello card (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs) with bug 1336576
> tracking related work, should I assume this Bug 1391401 is dedicated for
> Android so the right one to replace bug 1336576 on that Trello card
> (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs), as the card is titled "Fennec"?

Yup.

> 2. Does your team plan to take this bug like the other add-on tasks, or you
> expect anything to be done by the front-end team in Taipei?

We were going to do it, but if you'd like to ... :)
 
> 3. I don't have the background about the work, why should we have a pref in
> Nightly and this pref shouldn't be changed on beta and release? We intend to
> leave a switch in only Nightly to let people turn on the legacy add-on
> support? (i.e., to disable the limit of legacy)

We intend to leave the flag flippable in Nightly so that users can developer new system add-ons, experiments etc. outside of the WebExtension APIs.

Comment 5

[Wesly Huang (EPM)]

Thanks Andy and clear, I will

1. update the Trello card (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs)accordingly.
2. let the experts (your team) handle this bug : )

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from comment #4)
> (In reply to Wesly Huang (Fennec Frontend/Firefox EPM) from comment #3)
> > Andy, sorry for few simple questions:
> > 
> > 1. There is a Trello card (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs) with bug 1336576
> > tracking related work, should I assume this Bug 1391401 is dedicated for
> > Android so the right one to replace bug 1336576 on that Trello card
> > (https://trello.com/c/jh2qkMTs), as the card is titled "Fennec"?
> 
> Yup.
> 
> > 2. Does your team plan to take this bug like the other add-on tasks, or you
> > expect anything to be done by the front-end team in Taipei?
> 
> We were going to do it, but if you'd like to ... :)

Comment 6

[Nevin Chen(Not active on Bugzilla)]

Guess we could remove the fennec? tracking ?

Comment 7

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Everything from comment 0 except for "default it to true" (*) is already handled in toolkit so all we need to do here is flip the default for Fennec.  I'm running it through try right now but assuming nothing breaks, this will be trivial.

* The preference is actually whether legacy extensions are allowed so the change is to make false the default, not true.

Comment 8

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Attachment: Bug 1391401 Disable legacy extensions by default on Android

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/179490/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/179490/

Comment 9

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Comment on attachment 8907799 [details]
Bug 1391401 Disable legacy extensions by default on Android

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/179490/#review184736

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/337bae3d28e4
Disable legacy extensions by default on Android r=kmag

Comment 11

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/337bae3d28e4

Comment 12

[Nevin Chen(Not active on Bugzilla)]

Hi Andrew
In Fennec we need a special Switchboard Experiment add-on written by Sebastian to configure Fennec during runtime
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/switchboard-experiments/

but now even I set extensions.legacy.enabled to true, I can't install the xpi from disk anymore.( it was working at 57 beta 1~2)

Is it possible to make this Switchboard add-on an exception to the legacy add0on using similar approach like this?
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/31606bbabc50b08895d843b9f5f3da938ccdfbbf/browser/app/profile/firefox.js#92

Or is there another way we can install legacy add-ons just for QA testing?

Comment 13

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

The preference from your searchfox link just controls things in the about:addons UI in desktop Firefox.
The usual thing we do for this sort of testing is temporary installation.  In desktop, this is done from about:debugging but I don't believe that exists on Fennec.  I know it is possible using a patched version of the web-ext command line tool [1]
I've added :rpl to the CC list as well, he might have some additional ideas.  Though if this turns into a longer discussion it might make sense to take it to email or something instead of comments on a resolved bug...

[1] https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/pull/868

Comment 14

[CosminB]

This issue is verified as fixed on Fennec 58.0a1(2017-10-17) and Fennec 57.0b9 under Android 6.0.1, the preference extensions.legacy.enabled is displayed in about:config and is set to false by default.

The preference is not honored on Beta or Release, it only works on Nightly and Dev Edition builds.