199952 - More than one version of same plugin displays in about:plugins as enabled

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

This is a spin-off from bug 178834 (Red Hat mozilla script clobbers
MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH).

about:plugins displays the following for me (only showing relevant part):

---cut---
Shockwave Flash

    File name: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
    Shockwave Flash 6.0 r69

MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash 	Shockwave Flash 	swf 	Yes
application/futuresplash 	FutureSplash Player 	spl 	Yes

[...]

Shockwave Flash

    File name: /home/3.14/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
    Shockwave Flash 5.0 r50

MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash 	Shockwave Flash 	swf 	Yes
application/futuresplash 	FutureSplash Player 	spl 	Yes
---cut---

Of course, only one of those can be used. So the information is not telling me
which one (both say they are enabled).

pi

Comment 1

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

I should remark that I start Mozilla via:
env MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=/home/3.14/.mozilla/plugins:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins mozilla

pi

Comment 2

[David Baron :dbaron:]

I see this on Windows as well; I have two copies of npswf32.dll:
  9.0 r47 in C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash
  9.0r28 in C:\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\Plugins

about:plugins lists both:

Shockwave Flash

    File name: NPSWF32.dll
    Shockwave Flash 9.0 r47

MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash 	Adobe Flash movie 	swf 	Yes
application/futuresplash 	FutureSplash movie 	spl 	Yes


...

Shockwave Flash

    File name: npswf32.dll
    Shockwave Flash 9.0 r28

MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash 	Adobe Flash movie 	swf 	Yes
application/futuresplash 	FutureSplash movie 	spl 	Yes


Nominating for blocking1.9 since this interferes with determining whether security updates for plugins are installed correctly.

Comment 3

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

If we can determine that this causes other badness than "just" the bad UI, please renominate.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

FF never actually uses the r28 version even though it's reported, does it?

perhaps OT - I was prompted today via flash player update pop up on home XP PC to install new flash player.  I was at r115. new version = Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124. After completing update process, about:plugin still showed r115 (even after restarting).  And it also showed Shockwave Flash 9.0 r28 from 
C:\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\Plugins

I then ran the standalone executable for flash uninstall, and ran player install again and got r124 in about:plugins 
ref: http://bleedingedge.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25240&sid=3cdaae1666176f2dfe9428229d0402b4

I renamed Communicator\Program\Plugins to Communicator\Program\Plugins-old and of course r28 no longer appears in about:plugins.  But I wonder if Communicator\Program\Plugins interferes in some cases with adobe's ability to install new versions via web?

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Under the hood, both are enabled, but we pick the one with the newest version number (using versioncomparator). Detecting that one fully replaces the other is not trivial, so I'm inclined to WONTFIX this.