521877 - There should be some way to hide inactive add-ons from Developer Hub

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Developer Pages, enhancement, P4)

Description

[fcp]

Sometimes a developer wants to “remove” an add-on from AMO for various reasons. The usual answer to this request is that it is impossible to remove an add-on completely from AMO for a security reason (i.e. because otherwise someone else could take over the same add-on ID and push a “new version” to the existing users of the old add-on).  See e.g. bug 470869.

However, in some cases I have seen, what a developer really wants is not to remove the record of the add-on completely, but to hide the add-on both in public pages and in Developer Hub.  In other words, it is not technically about removing an add-on, but about hiding an inactive add-on from Developer Hub.  It should be possible without risking the security.

Comment 1

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

I am sure that I have suggested this before, so this might be a dupe. Nonetheless, +1.

Comment 2

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I am sure that I have suggested this before, so this might be a dupe.
> Nonetheless, +1.

Yeah, I remember typing a response to this question before, but in short:  admins should be able to delete add-ons completely, devs should be able to "delete" add-ons which just hides them from everyone.

Comment 4

[Patrick Thompson]

It's not clear why there should be such a security concern for deleting an extension. If as outlined in comment #1, then why not simply sequester any add-on IDs ever issued from being reallocated, i.e., don't re-use them? Be that as it may, minimally, being able to hide inactive add-ons from the developers hub would be an improvement.

AMO had server problems the other day and ended up adding three extra add-on entries on my hub which now require that I make extra server clicks in order to scroll past them. +1

Comment 5

[fcp]

(In reply to comment #4)
> then why not simply sequester any
> add-on IDs ever issued from being reallocated, i.e., don't re-use them?

That is what is discussed here.  See comment #2.  To “hide” means almost the same thing as to “delete,” but hiding an add-on does not remove the information about the add-on from the internal database on the server so that the server will refuse any future add-on with the same ID.

By the way, add-on IDs are not issued by the server but simply used by each developer.

Comment 6

[Potch [:potch]]

This is possible now, yes?

Comment 7

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

AMO now supports deleting add-ons. I don't see us ever supporting the ability for a developer to "hide" an add-on as we would have to make some sort of interface to see the hidden add-ons in order to unhide them.

So this is both fixed and wontfixed.