307760 - Extension manager shows two different versions of an extension for two versions of Thunberbird (with same profile)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

I had old versions of the Webmail and Hotmail (for Webmail) extensions for
Thunderbird 1.0.6 which were working fine (checking for updates did not find any
for that version).  Using the same profile with the latest Thunderbird 1.5b1, I
was told there were updates and so I installed them.  The new versions of
Webmail and Hotmail worked great with 1.5b1.  

However, when I went back to using 1.0.6, the extenstions manager showed the old
version numbers in the Extensions manager (although the About details showed the
new versions).  And with 1.5b1, I see the new version numbers in both the
Extensions manager and About details.

So something isn't right about where TB gets the version info the Extensions
manager.  Either the Webmail authors have fogotten to update the version
somewhere or TB is getting the wrong info from somewhere (and it hasn't updated
the version info to the latest ones).  

Why 1.0.6 shows the old version and 1.5b1 shows the new version is a mystery to
me (even though in the extensions dir, I see only 1 instance of each extension
with the new version number in their respective install.rdf files).  The
Extensions.rdf file on the other hand shows the old version numbers for both
extensions.  Do 1.0.6 and 1.5b1 get the version info for the Extensions manager
from different places?

Comment 1

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Attachment: 1.0.6 Extensions manager

Comment 2

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Attachment: 1.5b1 Extensions manager

Comment 3

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

With so many issues with extensions in general, I think figuring out what is
going on here would be nice to get into Beta 2 for polish.  Nominating.

Comment 4

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Yes, they do. Since you continue to run 1.0.x out of the same profile, the old
file (profile/extensions/Extensions.rdf vs. profile/extensions.rdf for 1.5)
lingers and isn't updated with the new version of the extension. You'd have to
independently update within Firefox 1.0.6 to freshen its datasource. When you
upgraded to 1.5 and updated your extensions, the updated metadata was written
ONLY into 1.5's ds. 

I don't think we really have plans to keep these two datasources in sync (i.e.
to support running 1.0 and 1.5 with zero visual blemishes simultaneously out of
the same profile) since the old location is now no longer used.

Comment 5

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

If we don't plan to fix this, we should probably release note it for FF and TB
Betas and 1.5 final...since a lot of users might be going back and forth 1.0.x
and newer versions like  I do.  Cc'ing Rafael.