273256 - minVer should not be editable

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Developer Pages, defect)

Description

[alanjstr]

The minVer of a theme or extension should not be editable.  The web service will
not check against it.  The application probably will not, either.  The maxVer
should remain editable, obviously.

Comment 1

[Wolf [:wolf]]

Having an editable minVer is beneficial to the Update website, it allows authors
to fix their listings to be more accurate than the install.rdf if need be, which
reduces the # of users who'd hit bugs or errors in the extension/theme with that
version, even though it was intended to be compatible.

It's unexpected behavior to have the MaxVer editable while the MinVer isn't. 

Sure, if somebody extends minVer below the install.rdf value, it won't work
(Firefox's code path for that may or may not verify both parts of the
TargetApplication arc, I haven't seen anything that says which for sure), but
Firefox has an error message that's human readable for that.

We're not particularly reliable about the information for older versions at this
point anyway, we don't verify minAppVer compatibility, would you want to be the
editor responsible for doing that to justify taking the control of minAppVer
away from the authors? Seems more reasonable to me to leave it editable and let
them adjust it as needed over time. Leaving the control, as we're giving it with
maxAppVer, with the authors. We can deal with individual complaints of items
that end up with bad values on a case-by-case basis.