1427180 - Fennec should consider syncing addons and extension storage data

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Android Sync, defect, P5)

Description

[gabriel.david.nieves]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android 6.0.1; Mobile; rv:58.0) Gecko/58.0 Firefox/58.0
Build ID: 20171218174357

Steps to reproduce:

I tried syncing uBlock Origin settings permitted by the addon to be synced. Tried syncing Firefox 57 with 58(although I don't think the version doesn't have to do with the issue.


Actual results:

Nothing happened. My add-ons didn't sync, and when I downloaded uBlock Origin manually and enabled sync on the addon(https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage) it didn't detected the settings uploaded.


Expected results:

What it should have happened would be that there should be an addon checkmark on the Firefox Sync settings and all my addons and it's own settings should had synced.

Comment 1

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

This is a known issue as most addons were not compatible between desktop and mobile, but now we are in a webextensions world it should be possible.

Comment 2

[gabriel.david.nieves]

(In reply to Mark Hammond [:markh] from comment #1)
> This is a known issue as most addons were not compatible between desktop and
> mobile, but now we are in a webextensions world it should be possible.

Oh, that explains why there wasn't a setting for that. Thanks for the edit!

Comment 3

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

If this happens, can I ask for some way of preventing syncing between desktop and mobile without having to turn off add-on syncing completely?

On a side note, there's already bug 1337720 - either we make that about themes only, or else one should be a duplicate of the other (not sure which way around makes more sense).

Comment 4

[gabriel.david.nieves]

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #3)
> If this happens, can I ask for some way of preventing syncing between
> desktop and mobile without having to turn off add-on syncing completely?
> 
> On a side note, there's already bug 1337720 - either we make that about
> themes only, or else one should be a duplicate of the other (not sure which
> way around makes more sense).

First, you should be able to, if this happens then in Firefox Account on Settings there should be all the things to sync. You should be able to disable everything except addons in that section(if this request succeeds)

Second, I didn't know the existence of that bug. It never showed up when I created this one. The only difference is that this one supports also extension data. Still, I would like that mods decides what to do. Either way, we may get this feature soon.

Comment 5

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

No, what I mean is that with the way Sync currently works, a data category can only be enabled or disabled per account, so if add-on syncing started working right now on mobile, I couldn't disable it without also disabling add-on syncing between my desktop Firefoxes using the same account. Bug 1215415 would provide some sort of workaround, although it wouldn't cover every possible scenario...

Comment 6

[Andy McKay]

Syncing extension data is bug 1316442.

Syncing of the add-ons themselves I think should be done in the long term. However we probably need to approach this with a bit of care. WebExtensions are much more ameniable to syncing between Desktop and Android:
* however there are a lot of API gaps between the two platforms at this point in time
* even if the APIs all match up, the usage of the add-on might not make sense, for example tab or window manipulation might not be possible.

We should increase the usage of add-ons on Android though. One option could be "here are all your add-ons from Desktop, would you like to install any on Android" to make it really easy for people to install their favourite Desktop add-on.

Comment 7

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Closing per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473195

Contact :susheel if you think this bug should be re-opened