Closed Bug 1625799 Opened 4 years ago Closed 4 years ago

Desktop FireFox requires v72 for remote debugging but most recent Android FireFox is v68

Categories

(DevTools :: about:debugging, defect)

74 Branch
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1607842

People

(Reporter: jonathan, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:74.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/74.0

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Open "about:debugging" on desktop FireFox
  2. Connect Android device via USB, enable debugging in Android FireFox settings
  3. Select the device and click "Connect"
  4. Pick a tab and click "Inspect"

Actual results:

When I click "Connect", I see this message in desktop FireFox "about:debugging" tab: "The connected browser has an old version (68.6.0). The minimum supported version is (72.0a1). This is an unsupported setup and may cause DevTools to fail. Please update the connected browser. "

When I click "Inspect", a new tab "about:devtools-toolbox" with some parameters opens but there's nothing there, the content area is a completely empty white background.

I checked the Play Store, my Android FireFox version 68.6.0 is the most recent available to me. I tried Android FireFox beta, that version is 68.7.0. My desktop FireFox is version 74.0 is also the most recent available to me.

Expected results:

I know app publishers can do a gradual rollout but how is it that the most recent version available on Android is 4 major versions behind what's required for debugging?

Debug feature should support at least the most recent version that's been published on each platform.

Or maybe the message should be: Please update the connected browser or downgrade this browser.

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Component: Untriaged → about:debugging
Product: Firefox → DevTools

Hi Jonathan, sorry about the inconvenience, see my answer on another bug copied below.
I will file another bug to show a special message for users trying to connect to Fennec/Firefox For Android.

(In reply to Julian Descottes [:jdescottes] from Bug 1607842 comment #3)

Hi michelesr,

For remote debugging, our backward compatibility policy only supports debugging servers at most 2 versions older than the client. This means that ESR68 can be debugged from Firefox 68, 69 or 70. Since the release channel is now 72, you have to use Firefox Desktop ESR68 in order to connect to Fennec (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-esr).

We don't actively prevent connections that are outside of the supported range, that's why you were able to use 71 to debug Fennec68ESR. And luckily there were no backward compatibility breaking changes in 71 for your use case. Actively preventing connections is something we might do in the future, it should reduce the friction, see Bug 1492464.

Also, there should be a warning message in about:debugging that mentions the version issue.

Closing as wontfix, but feel free to post here if you have other questions.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
See Also: → 1625906

Thanks. I was able to connect by downgrading to desktop FireFox v68 and using WebIDE.

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