1444189 - Really show permissions prompts on first run from stub installer

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, defect, P1)

Description

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

From https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1441271#c23, the solution from bug 1441271 isn't actually going to work as-is.  This bug is to follow up with something that actually works.

I see a few options:
1. Defer AddonManager.installDistributionAddons() until all the other distribution logic happens
2. Make all distribution addons start out disabled and then wait until after distribution.ini is processed and enable them at that point if the pref isn't set

I don't love either one and there's some risk that there will be some subtle behavior change that will affect existing users of distribution addons.

Comment 1

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

Is there some other way we could have the prompt behavior trigger that doesn't involve setting a pref in distribution.ini? Something like dropping a magic file into distribution/extensions/ for instance, or adding a tag to the name of the .xpi itself. Just an idea, I don't know how viable anything like that would be.

Comment 2

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

I was thinking about that.  I'm reluctant to add more cold startup I/O (ie presence of some other file in the profile) for this narrow case.
We already constraint the xpi file name to be the addon id with the extension .xpi.  We could add some additional encoding in the file name, but ick...

Comment 3

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Mike, I'm leaning toward option 1 from comment 0, but this has the potential to affect existing users of distribution addons.  Do we have a way to warn them that this is coming?

Comment 4

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

> Mike, I'm leaning toward option 1 from comment 0, but this has the potential to affect existing users of distribution addons.  Do we have a way to warn them that this is coming?

What will be the impact exactly?

Comment 5

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

(In reply to Mike Kaply [:mkaply] from comment #4)
> > Mike, I'm leaning toward option 1 from comment 0, but this has the potential to affect existing users of distribution addons.  Do we have a way to warn them that this is coming?
> 
> What will be the impact exactly?

Distribution addons won't be installed early during startup on the first run in a new profile, they'll still be installed at startup, but not necessarily before eg the homepage is displayed

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

That could be a problem for a couple distributions that actually take over the homepage with their extensions...

Comment 7

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

The homepage is controlled by a preference (browser.startup.homepage), can't they just set that in distribution.ini instead of using an extension?

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

My concern is that there are homepages being set by the extensions themselves that won't show. I can test this locally. Do you have a patch I can check?

Comment 9

[:shell escalante]

aswan and mkaply - after talking about this with Kev - we're going to pursue a different way.  The hope that this could be hidden behind a pref was definitely not as easy as it sounded (sorry Andrew).

We don't want to change timing to the distro logic in general late in the game, in case that breaks other edge cases.  So we can stop trying to get a permissions prompt to show.

Comment 10

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

closing per comment 9, we can open new bugs for whatever new flow gets designed