Closed Bug 1519725 Opened 7 years ago Closed 7 years ago

Addons on Firefox for Android do not update.

Categories

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Add-on Manager, defect)

Product:
Firefox for Android Graveyard
Component:
Add-on Manager
Version:
Firefox 64
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: creesch.r, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:65.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/65.0

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Install an addon from AMO.
  2. Wait for the addon published to publish a new version to AMO.
  3. Wait several days while using firefox on android in a regular manner.
  4. Check about:addons for the addon version number.

Actual results:

The addon is updated to a new version.

Expected results:

The addon is not updated to a new version.

I did check this with several addons, I also changed the interval at which firefox for android checks for new addons. Even at the shortest interval addons do not get updated.

Thanks for your report!

What addon did you install? Can you please check on the latest version of Nightly to see it is still reproducible? You can install from Google Play.

Flags: needinfo?(creesch.r)

In the name of science, I bundled up some minor code fixes and published a new version of the Video Background Play Fix add-on.
Version 1.3 necessitated a permission bump, so the slow update rate your currently seeing at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/video-background-play-fix/statistics/usage/versions/?last=30 represents new installs and manual updates from older versions.

If add-on updates are generally working, within the next few days v1.4 should relatively rapidly be supplanted by v1.4.3.

I actually did notice it with several addons. It seems however that things aren't as straightforward as I thought they are, so sorry for the long story below. I do hope it all makes sense.

Extensions that are not updating are:

I did test it a bit more. I made an addon to specifically test this and submitted it to AMO making sure to check Android as a platform. You can find it here
I then installed it in both the stable version of Firefox for Android (64) and the nightly version of Firefox. On both version I set both the autoupdate and updatee interval to 120 in about:config.
Then I updated the extension's version number and did submit that one to AMO.

To my surprise this extension did update on both the 64 version of Firefox. Nightly has not updated so far.

However as it did update on Firefox 64 it got me wondering.

I am one of the developers of reddit moderator toolbox (one of the extensions that doesn't update) and when publishing we always checked Android as an platform. That made me wonder if that didn't happen (and if that is the case why previously checked platforms are unchecked when submitting a new version). So I also submitted a new version there and took extra care to check the Android checkbox.

Sure enough, now it has updated on Firefox 64 for Android.

So it seems like there a few things going on:

  • Extensions on AMO can be installed even though they are officially not available for Android. Once installed extensions will however refuse to update.
  • AMO depends on the url to tell the user if an extension is suitable for their platform rather than properly detecting the platform. When searching for extensions from a search engine it is very easy to end up on "Desktop" AMO which will still be identical to "mobile" AMO. One will however indicate that the extension might not be suitable while the other does not. When I googled for stylus Firefox I ended up on the latter which on Firefox for Android renders as a nice mobile page giving me no clue that I am looking at the desktop version of the extension.
    For example:
  • When submitting updates of extensions to AMO it will not remember what platforms have been selected before making it very easy to accidentally withhold updates to Firefox for Android users.
Flags: needinfo?(creesch.r)

In that case please look through https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues (possibly also https://github.com/mozilla/addons-server/issues, but most likely the former) and see whether the issue is already known (e.g. I found https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/6136 for one of the things you mentioned), and if not, report it yourself.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID

Uh invalid? I still think it is partially valid as half of the extensions are not updating. I am not sure if that due to Firefox for android or AMO.

I agree there are also several other issues with AMO itself that possibly require new reports but that doesn't warrant this one being invalid in my opinion? I get the distinct feeling that once I make a report there that I will be returned here as it is a Firefox for Android issue :(

as half of the extensions are not updating

More than what you mentioned in comment 3?

Is there an add-on that doesn't update even though it is marked as compatible with Android on AMO?

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #6)

Is there an add-on that doesn't update even though it is marked as compatible with Android on AMO?

Shouldn't all extensions that are able to be installed also be able to update? If that is the case are you sure that they are not doing now due to the AMO backend or can it also be something specific to Firefox for Android?

The version check URL that's visible through about:config also includes fields which would presumably allow distinguishing between Android and Desktop, so my first guess would be that AMO only returns add-on versions that are marked as compatible with the respective app.
It would also make sense - there might be circumstances where an add-on author might want to intentionally set a different compatibility state for Desktop and Android, and it that case obviously we cannot do the opposite thing and update anyway.

If you manually installed an Android-only extension on Desktop and then updated the add-on, you'd probably get the same result, i.e. no automatic update.

I remember that for a while (or still?) we had the problem that AMO made it easy to mark an add-on as compatible with Android without intending to, so we had a lot of add-ons that didn't actually work on Android, but could be installed anyway. Now it seems we have the opposite situation instead.

I need to pay more attention the next time I update my add-on again, but if I remember correctly you have to manually enable Android compatibility again in possibly at least two different places, so that might explain things.

Yeah what you say makes sense.

there might be circumstances where an add-on author might want to intentionally set a different compatibility state for Desktop and Android, and it that case obviously we cannot do the opposite thing and update anywa

Also makes sense, it is a shame that initial installation from AMO is so easily allowed meaning there are probably a lot of people out there with addons that never updated.

In any case, I left a reply to the issue you linked and made two more for the other related things.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Product: Firefox for Android → Firefox for Android Graveyard
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.