562527 - Architectural changes break add-ons in 3.1 beta2

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Eric Moore]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.5pre) Gecko/20100427 Thunderbird/3.1b2

I installed build 1 of beta 2 of 3.1. Its sharing a profile with 3.0.4 and the latest nightly build of 3.1. I have extensions.checkCompatibility , extensions.checkCompatibility.3.1b , extensions.checkCompatibility.3.2a and extensions.checkUpdateSecurity set to false. 

Personas 1.5.3 is enabled but did not display the persona. I tried switching to a different persona and it displayed it, but that made it switch to the default theme. I'm assuming this is Thunderbird's fault because it works fine with 3.0.4 and never did that before. It also blurred the bold text for the quickfilters toolbar.

I temporarily switched back to 3.0.4, changed the theme to what I want and it displayed both the persona and theme. However, when I switched back to 3.1 beta 2 the persona disappeared.

ImportExportTools 2.3.2.1 is listed as "Not compatible with Thunderbird 3.1beta2" but works (due to my overriding the version check). 

Quick Filter prototype 0.9 is listed as "Not compatible with Thunderbird 3.1beta2". Its enabled and the toolbar etc. is displayed but it doesn't work. It displays two toolbars (should only be one).

Customize Header Toolbar 0.3.0 is listed as "Not compatible with Thunderbird 3.1beta2" but works (due to my overriding the version check). 

These 4 add-ons work fine and don't display any warnings/error message in tools -> add-ons with 3.0.4. 3.1 shouldn't introduce any architectural changes that break extensions written for 3.0. 

Most users will not know how to bypass the version check and some that do, would assume it didn't work because of the red error message. I find it confusing that a release whose main goal is supposedly to convince users who either deliberately did not upgrade to 3.0 or rolled back to 2.0.0.24 from 3.0 to upgrade to the next major version, would add yet another obstacle.


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Eric, 3.1 will break some compatibility. Extension authors need to update their addons, it isn't not Mozilla's responsibility to ensure that addons work with new versions. When the authors release updates for their addons, you can install them via Addons > Check for updates

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The "Not compatible with Thunderbird 3.1beta2" is not coming from a architectural change.
It's a very simple system, each addon contains a file with :
- compatible with Version x to y (example: 2.0.* to 3.0.*)

A Thunderbird 3.1 that finds an installed addon that reports "compatible with 2.0.* to 3.0.*" will reject such an addon with this error message.

3.1 is a major Release and there will be changes that will break some extensions. Only minor Releases (3.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.2) should not break addons.

Comment 3

[Eric Moore]

Tyler:

Two of the add-ons I mentioned are developed by Mozilla. Doesn't Mozilla at least have a responsibility for any Thunderbird add-ons they develop to work with the latest release of Thunderbird? 

Mathias:

In earlier releases if I globally disabled version checking in order to use a add-on that didn't support that version of Thunderbird, it didn't complain like any of the 3.1 builds does. Should I create a separate bug report about globally disabling version checking no longer working correctly?

According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Toolkit_version_format 3.1 is a minor update to 3.0. Supposedly Thunderbird uses a major[.minor[.release[.build]]][+] format.

Comment 4

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

>Doesn't Mozilla at least have a responsibility for any Thunderbird add-ons they 
>develop to work with the latest release of Thunderbird? 

3.1b1 is not a final Release, it's a Beta.

>Should I create a separate bug report about
>globally disabling version checking no longer working correctly?

That is a not a bug, that is an intended change. Many Uusers disabled the compatibility check and a few releases later they got crashes, high Memory usage, memory leaks and other issues because they had old Addons installed.
They thought that it's a bug in the new Release.

>According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Toolkit_version_format 3.1 is a
>minor update to 3.0. Supposedly Thunderbird uses a
>major[.minor[.release[.build]]][+] format.

The quoted Version Format is listed under "Older Formats"....
3.0.x to 3.1[.0] is a major Version update, an minor Update would be 3.1-> 3.1.1

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

>Two of the add-ons I mentioned are developed by Mozilla. Doesn't Mozilla at
>least have a responsibility for any Thunderbird add-ons they develop to work
>with the latest release of Thunderbird? 

They will be supported when Thunderbird 3.1 is released. It is not a final version, and it not recommended for general use by end users. If you need your addons, I recommend you go back to 3.0 until 3.1 officially comes out.

Comment 6

[David Ascher (:davida)]

BTW, Quick Filter prototype will never be made compatible w/ 3.1, as it's been integrated into 3.1 itself =).