298305 - Extension update manager should not use cached RDF extension update information files

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Sergey Sokoloff]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050531 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050531 Firefox/1.0+

Yesterday I noticed that some RDF files with extension update-related
information (extension versions, download URLs etc.) somehow managed to persist
in my cache. Only when I used Shift+Reload to refresh one of those files
manually, I finally managed to update the corresponding extension (via Tools -->
Check for Updates...), getting its new version. Then I cleared the cache
completely and relaunched the update check, and I've managed to update a couple
of other extensions.

While the fact of having RDF files cached is not a bug (it could be a result of
some Firefox crash and/or of using CacheFix extension), I am still worried about
the behaviour principles of Extension Update Manager. Firefox should not rely
upon cached instances of RDF files containing extension update-related
information. Update Manager should take those RDFs directly from the Web,
bypassing any cache or proxies.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
I haven't tried to reproduce the problem, because I feel that was a random glitch.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

We follow the normal network-cache rules here, where the server that provides
the update RDF can decide how long it is allowed to persist in the cache. I
don't think this is something we want to fix.