542385 - Create a type of add-on that can install/update/uninstall without a restart (bootstrap=true)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Daniel Buchner [:dbuc]]

Details here.

Comment 1

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

After talking to mossop about this, it looks like we can potentially do this with a few tweaks to existing extension manager code:

* Add a new extension type constant, e.g. nsIUpdateItem.TYPE_JETPACK, to http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/public/nsIExtensionManager.idl#556

* In in toolkit/mozapps/extensions/src/nsExtensionManager.js.in modify at least the following functions:
  * getAddonTypeFromInstallManifest()
  * installRequiresRestart()

Comment 2

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

This is actually a patch that needs to be committed to the extension manager, not to JpSecure; should we move it over there and nominate for blocking 1.9.3?

Comment 3

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Moving to Toolkit::Add-ons Manager.  Work here needs to be done in toolkit, not Jetpack, right?

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Nominating for blocking1.9.3 since Jetpack requires this.

Comment 5

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Atul, I can take this off your plate if you haven't already written the patch.

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

To be clear there are kind of two bugs here. One for implementing this on trunk for 1.9.3 (which is firmly in my court in the EM rewrite) and one for potentially adding the same support to the 3.6/3.5 extension manager. The latter can certainly be taken on by anyone (likely with my assistance). I would suggest first doing a quick scoping exercise to guess at the work required and then getting some kind of agreement from the 3.6/3.5 branch drivers that they would take such a patch before spending the time completing it.

Comment 7

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Ah, OK.  Does the first bug you mention already exist?  I assumed it was this one.  (And I presume the second patch can't be written until the first is done.)  I'm writing up the Firefox Q1 project wiki page for Jetpack, which needs to point to a bug for this work.

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Let's call this one the trunk version, I've filed bug 544021 for the branch version. There isn't really anything stopping work proceeding on the branch version I think.

Comment 9

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

Thanks for clarifying that mossop, sorry I didn't mention it earlier.

Drew, if you could do the scoping exercise work for this on 3.6/3.5 it would be incredibly appreciated.  I was thinking we could "cap" the scoping work to 1-2 days of investigation, but whatever works.

Comment 10

[Damon Sicore (:damons)]

Is there some other solution to this in the works?  Seems like I heard someone say that we're going to allow/suggest to people to use parts of the api that don't require a restart, but if they don't, too bad.  If that's the case, is this still something that is required?

Comment 11

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

This is already implemented on the project branch, waiting on reviews before this will hit trunk.

Comment 12

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Landed on trunk as a part of bug 553169

Comment 13

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Played around with the examples from Atul (https://secure.toolness.com/xpi/restartless/) and it works fantastic.

Verified fixed with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100511 Minefield/3.7a5pre ID:20100511030640

Dave, how does the test coverage look like? What is already covered by automated tests and what should we test with a manual test on Litmus?

Comment 14

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Played around with the examples from Atul
> (https://secure.toolness.com/xpi/restartless/) and it works fantastic.
> 
> Verified fixed with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US;
> rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100511 Minefield/3.7a5pre ID:20100511030640
> 
> Dave, how does the test coverage look like? What is already covered by
> automated tests and what should we test with a manual test on Litmus?

Automated tests are covering installing/uninstalling/enabling/disabling these types of extensions but I think as they are a new feature and the UI around them is potentially different it'd definitely be worth doing the same in litmus tests.

Comment 15

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Sure. I will add some Litmus tests.

Comment 16

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

dev-doc-needed; is https://wiki.mozilla.org/Extension_Manager:Bootstrapped_Extensions up to date?

The new flag should also be listed at https://developer.mozilla.org/en/install.rdf

Also linking to bugs about future enhancements of bootstrapped extensions (bug 564675, bug 564667).

Comment 17

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #16)
> dev-doc-needed; is
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Extension_Manager:Bootstrapped_Extensions up to date?

Yes I believe that is still accurate. I'm going to try to find some more time this coming week to work more on updating documentation but if you want to work on it first then I'd be more than grateful for the help!

Comment 18

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

For the reference, the documentation is at https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Bootstrapped_extensions . I updated the wiki.m.o page to point there.

Comment 19

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Litmus tests have been added:

https://litmus.mozilla.org/show_test.cgi?id=15310
https://litmus.mozilla.org/show_test.cgi?id=15311
https://litmus.mozilla.org/show_test.cgi?id=15312