425053 - Remove deprecated search plugins on Fx3 install/major update ?

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Internationalization: Localization, defect, P2)

Description

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

In bug 394046 we found several locales had Fx2 search plugins left behind after a (test) major-update to 3.0 betas - bug 394046 comment #47 has a list for 2.0.0.12 to 3.0b4. Axel would like to look at this on a case-by-case basis, so here's a bug for that.

This will also affect over-the-top installs for Fx3, because the win32 installer and updates both use mozilla/browser/install/removed-files.in to build a list of files to be deleted on install/update.

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Axel, I don't see cases where we want to preserve the old plugins, if we're
removing a default, we should be doing so for good enough reasons that we're
willing to remove the installed plugins...

Comment 2

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

We removed some, or replaced them, for no better reason than "not oh so popular". Should we really remove those, and remove possibly selected search plugins for existing users?

The case is different where we actually have a service moving from here to there, say, amazon.com to amazon.cn for zh-CN.

To me, there's a fuzzy line between the two.

Comment 3

[Mike Schroepfer]

Can we close this out axel?

Comment 4

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Attachment: list of plugins on the 1.8 branch

Comment 5

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Attachment: list of plugins on trunk

Created a list of plugins on the branch and the trunk. I doubt we'll still remove plugins on trunk, so that should be rather good. The list of removed plugins is as follows:

centrum-cz
eBay-fy-NL
eBay-nl
eBay-zh-CN
eBay-zh-TW
filesearchru
goo
google-ar
grandiccionari
lingvo.yandex.ru
nana
netex
nosaltres
pbi-pl
taobao
wikipedia-bg
wikipedia-zh
yahoo-jp-shopping
yahoo-ru
yahoo-zh-CN

Need to go through that list with Mic and filter out those that we should remove. pbi-pl is surely one, for example, that service died. We probably want a 1.8 patch for that, even. Others are not so obvious, like yahoo in russia, or goo in Japan.

Comment 6

[Mic Berman]

per comment #5, agreed pbi-pl is not working so it should be removed for sure.

this is my understanding of how this would work: if we remove this list than users of Firefox 2 would no longer have access to these search plugins upon upgrade. in the case that a user had made one of these a default that would be a broken user experience. so if we leave this list intact (besides pbi-pl) than users get the new list and this list as well (in the appropriate locales). it seems that wouldn't be bad, would it be better?...in some cases a users list of plug-ins in a particular locale becomes larger like 8 or even 10 plug-ins (in the case of china and japan maybe). 

i'd like a review by beltzner on this idea of not removing them. in many cases the reason we remove a plug-in is to replace it with another service that is considered a better experience. for example, in the case of netex for hebrew, apparently they promote search results based on direct payments to them without informing the user that a result was promoted because that provider paid netex to do so. we chose to replace netex with zap.co.il instead as a result. keeping this list would mean the user would now get both. 

i'd like a review by gen for japan on yahoo-jp-shopping - as i'm not sure what obligations we may have made or not made?

i'll try and ping both these folks in IRC or please add your opinions here. thanks

Comment 7

[Gen Kanai [:gen]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> 
> i'd like a review by gen for japan on yahoo-jp-shopping - as i'm not sure what
> obligations we may have made or not made?

We have informed Yahoo! Japan that yahoo-jp-shopping will not ship with FF3.

Comment 8

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

IMO, simplest is best, and if someone's running Firefox 3 they should have the same list of default search plugins as anyone else running Firefox 3. To do otherwise could lead to a bunch of strange scenarios where two users within the same locale could see entirely different results when they ask to reset to the default plugins, restart in safe mode, etc, etc.

Comment 9

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

We can't technically do that right now. We only have a single removal list [1] for all locales, including en-US, so right now, we just can't, say, remove ebay from the list if there's a much better local alternative coming up.

We can be aggressive when removing search engines, though.

I'm still concerned about the user experience on update, let's pick 'nl' as example. We added marktplaats.nl as it's more popular in the Netherlands than ebay, and dropped ebay, as both service belong to ebay and we didn't want to put too much of the same stuff in. Yet, if a user of Firefox 2 nl is using that plugin, and updates to Firefox 3, we'd be changing his settings, and I'm not sure for the better.

[1] http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/browser/installer/removed-files.in

Comment 10

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

beltzner says "rip". Patch coming up tomorrow.

Comment 11

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Here's the deal:

In an email conversation with rstrong and nthomas, these are the technical hurdles:

At least software update removes its files *after* the update, which means, we must not add any file that we actually want to install, in any localization.

So I think we need to stick to the list in comment 5, with one removal, that is wikipedia-bg. I'll add wikipedia-zh to the removal list, as zh-TW is using wikipedia-zh-TW now, and I made sure that zh-CN doesn't conflict in bug 429293.

Comment 12

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Attachment: remove most of the localized 2.0 search plugins

Content-wise, a review for Mic, patch-wise for Nick. Ick.

I removed the searchplugins/ directory remove, if we'd ever fix the directory removal bug, that'd be a stupid thing to still have around.

Comment 13

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

Comment on attachment 315967 [details] [diff] [review]
remove most of the localized 2.0 search plugins

>Index: removed-files.in
>===================================================================
>@@ -36,7 +36,6 @@
> searchplugins/google.gif
> searchplugins/yahoo.src
> searchplugins/yahoo.gif
>-searchplugins/

This will change the way the installer works for pave-over installs. Is that an intended ?

Comment 14

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> (From update of attachment 315967 [details] [diff] [review])
> >Index: removed-files.in
> >===================================================================
> >@@ -36,7 +36,6 @@
> > searchplugins/google.gif
> > searchplugins/yahoo.src
> > searchplugins/yahoo.gif
> >-searchplugins/
> 
> This will change the way the installer works for pave-over installs. Is that 
> intended ?

At least, that's how I read Rob's comments.

Comment 15

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

<nthomas>	the update manifest generator already drops the directory
<Pike>	oh
<nthomas>	since it can't handle it anyways
<Pike>	then I should probably revert that change
<nthomas>	one sec, let me just verify that
<nthomas>	yeah, anything ending in / will not be added as a remove instruction to the manifest

... added the searchplugins/ line back.

Comment 16

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Attachment: same list, but without searchplugins/

Comment 17

[Mic Berman]

Comment on attachment 315976 [details] [diff] [review]
same list, but without searchplugins/

reviewed and looks good

Comment 18

[Mic Berman]

further to comment, list accurately reflects all plug-ins that are expected to be removed across all locales and as documented in http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3_web_services_Review and individual locale bugs

Comment 19

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

Comment on attachment 315976 [details] [diff] [review]
same list, but without searchplugins/

a1.9=beltzner

Comment 20

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Checking in removed-files.in;
/cvsroot/mozilla/browser/installer/removed-files.in,v  <--  removed-files.in
new revision: 1.48; previous revision: 1.47
done