1529346 - Check for update with update agent before startup

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Application Update, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Adam Gashlin (he/him) [:agashlin] (ex-moco)]

If an update becomes available but the update agent hasn't yet run to download it, Firefox will download the update and notify the user to restart. This can happen soon after the browser starts, and in particular with Nightly it happens daily, causing minor irritation at "needing" to restart the browser so soon after starting it. The update agent running on a regular schedule may not solve this by itself, unless the computer was left running overnight.

Once the update agent is available, we could start it from the browser very early in startup, to check for an update, download, and apply it, so that the browser that is run is always up to date. This could be similar to the existing startup check for update.status which immediately runs the updater to apply an already-downloaded update.

Something similar was suggested in bug 814628, where the reporter is concerned that an update might be available to block an exploit in a restored tab. The scheduled update agent task should be sufficient in that case, though.

Some objections:

• There will be a substantial delay while waiting for the update to download
• Because of the undesirable delay, this would almost certainly be opt-in
• It is only really useful for the frequently-updated Nightly channel
• Not worth the cost of implementation for such a narrow use case (Nightly users who don't leave their computers running, and would prefer the delayed startup to a manual restart)

Comment 1

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

I like this the more I think about it.

Though it would affect startup time (it would for the Update Agent case as well), we might want to also do this for the non Update Agent case so it could be implemented on other platforms. During startup (if the client opted-in) it would perform an update check, download the update if available, and restart to apply it with minimal UI. It could also have a required minimum amount of time since the last check and the last launch of Firefox before doing this that would approximate when we publish updates so it wouldn't do this on every startup.

Comment 2

[Mark Smith [:mcs]]

(In reply to Robert Strong (Robert they/them) [:rstrong] (use needinfo to contact me) from comment #1)

I like this the more I think about it.

Though it would affect startup time (it would for the Update Agent case as well), we might want to also do this for the non Update Agent case so it could be implemented on other platforms.

Yes please :)
Some Tor Browser users definitely like the idea of "make sure I am up-to-date before I start using the browser." That implies that everything blocks until the update check is finished and (if applicable) an update has been applied. I am not sure if that kind of blocking behavior is what you have in mind though.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

It is what I am leaning towards

Comment 4

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

With the --backgroundtask backgroundupdate approach of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1689520, we won't be able to do this.