1620861 - Thunderbird is not prompting for updates to WebExtensions when there are new permissions

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Add-Ons: General, defect, P1)

Description

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

A week or so ago, Thunderbird Conversations 3.0.16 was released. When I looked at the stats yesterday, I noticed that only 500 or so installs had updated/installed it.

Normally the vast majority of users migrate within a day or so.

The thing I realised that is different is that 3.0.16 introduces the "addressBooks", "messagesRead", "messagesMove" permissions into the manifest (it just had storage before).

I have just been doing some testing, and there is NO prompt in Thunderbird, unless I manually go into the add-on manager and check for updates.

Requesting tracking, as with the move to WebExtensions, this is going to stop a lot of work going out to users for existing extensions to move across.

STR

1. Set extensions.update.interval to a reasonably small value, I did 1800 to set it for every half hour.
2. Install Thunderbird Conversations 3.0.12.
3. Restart Thunderbird
4. Open the error console and turn on xhrs.
5. Wait half an hour.

Expected Results

Thunderbird should prompt or provide some indication that an update is waiting. In Firefox, there's a yellow triangle displayed on the three-bar menu, and then when you open it, you get information about the fact an add-on wants to update.

I'm not sure if Firefox also opens an actual prompt, I don't think it does.

Actual Results

No prompts. You can see the xhr to versioncheck-bg.addons.thunderbird.net go through, but nothing happens to tell the user.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I should have said, the versioncheck does list the latest version of Conversations (3.0.17) as being available.

Comment 2

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: 1620861-update-prompt-1.diff

:-(

Comment 3

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: 1620861-update-prompt-2.diff

Here's another nasty little mistake in the same code. Found while seeing what tests I could borrow for bug 1621841.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 9132760 [details] [diff] [review]
1620861-update-prompt-2.diff

Review of attachment 9132760 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Looks good, r=mkmelin

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/6e05e1715471
Fix prompt for extension permission updates. r=mkmelin DONTBUILD

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9132760 [details] [diff] [review]
1620861-update-prompt-2.diff

OK for beta .... and ESR assuming no problems develop

Comment 7

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 75.0b2:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/5fc725c68637

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Thunderbird 68.7: https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr68/rev/4d80628c2446aa3e45f01f7474c52efd775d1f8c