411680 - Always show more details about update check failures in the error console

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Shaver suggests that when an addon update check fails and we just show "there was an error checking for updates" in hte UI that we should always include the error in the console for users to see and pass on to developers.

Don't really think this is blocking but if it's a wanted I may be able to find the time for it.

Comment 1

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

This does not block the final release of Firefox 3.

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: patch rev 1

This gives us three different logging functions, LOG, WARN and ERROR. LOG does nothing if the preference extensions.logging.enabled is false. When the pref is true it logs to the error console and the text console. WARN and ERROR both always log to the error console and when the pref is true will also log to the text console. ERROR additionally always logs to the log file in the profile folder.

The intention is that LOG is for tracing messages useful for debugging the add-ons manager itself. WARN is for messages that add-on developers will find useful in tracking down problems with installation and updates. ERROR is for problems that are likely in the add-ons manager itself and need to be logged so that we can track them down.

For this bug I've just made the cases where updates fail a warning.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Comment on attachment 395031 [details] [diff] [review]
patch rev 1

Looks fine. There is a lot of inconsistency with the string format passed to these functions. I've seen
1. strings that end with \n while others don't.
2. long strings that contain \r\n, other long strings that contain \n, and other long strings that don't have any type of newline.

Might be a good thing to file a followup to clean this up.

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Comment on attachment 395031 [details] [diff] [review]
patch rev 1

Another thing that I think would be nice is to denote where these logs are coming from along the lines of EM_LOG, EM_WARN, and EM_ERROR or something similar.

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Landed: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/325a834b759c

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Comment on attachment 395031 [details] [diff] [review]
patch rev 1

This change only affects the error console and provides an easier way for extension developers to debug issues with extension update. This is a low risk change and has been baking on trunk.

Comment 7

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Comment on attachment 395031 [details] [diff] [review]
patch rev 1

a192=beltzner

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Pushed to branch: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.2/rev/08608eb26d54