575744 - got installed addon into a state where its components were not registered

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: Extension Compatibility, defect)

Description

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

While installing my extensions to test them on trunk:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/14214
I managed to get one of the extension installs (the one for Character Identifier) into a state such that it was half-working:  the extension was displayed as installed, and its overlay code worked, but its JS component wasn't actually registered, so I got an exception thrown on line 94 of characterDialog.js.

(The source for the 0.1.2 release of the extension is at http://hg.mozilla.org/users/dbaron_mozilla.com/char-identifier/rev/25ff569da00d if you're interested.)

I'm not exactly sure what steps I took to get into this state, and I tried a number of things afterwards to try to repro, but they were something like
 * create a new profile
 * do tools -> Addons -> Get Addons and poke around in the search UI a little until I discovered it wasn't working yet
 * go to https://addons.mozilla.org/ and search for character identifier
 * install the extension from the "Character Identifier" page ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3929 ) by clicking the "Add to Firefox" button multiple times, and cancelling some of the dialogs by closing them, but since I didn't realize anything was happening at first, clicking "Install" enough to get it listed twice in the addons manager
 * click through from that page to my user page ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/14214 )
 * also install leak monitor and about:accessibilityenabled (such that they're listed once in the install dialog)
 * restart by closing the window and running Firefox again

Then, after restarting, when I selected some text and chose "Identify characters", I got a dialog with no characters listed, and an error on the JS console that I'd expect would be the result of my components not being registered.

Comment 1

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

(Mossop suggested I file this even though I couldn't figure out how to get into that state again.)

Comment 2

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I just managed to repro again, twice (the second time reading this list of steps).  The steps I used were:
 * create a fresh profile, and start the browser (don't make default browser)
 * load https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3929
 * click the Add To Firefox button, wait for the Install button, and say Install
 * click the Add To Firefox button again, wait for the Install button, and close the dialog
 * click the Add To Firefox button a third time, wait for the Install button, and say Install
 * from there, click the "L. David Baron" link
 * click the "Add to Firefox" button for Leak Monitor and click Install
 * click the "Add to Firefox" button for about:accessibilityenabled and click Install
 * close the browser window (choose "Quit")
 * start Firefox again with that profile
 * highlight some text on the start page, and right click it
 * choose "Identify Characters"

This leads to an empty character dialog and the exception:
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80570016 (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE) [nsIJSCID.getService]"  nsresult: "0x80570016 (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://char-identifier/content/characterDialog.js :: CharacterDialogOnLoad :: line 94"  data: no]

Comment 3

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

And this is all using the x86-64 Linux nightly 2010-06-29-03-mozilla-central, SourceStamp=0e0e2516f04e

Comment 4

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Can reproduce with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:2.0b2pre) Gecko/20100629 Minefield/4.0b2pre

The steps are much simpler:
1. Open https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/14214
2. Quickly click on all three install buttons
3. Wait for the installation dialogs and accept all
4. Open the Addons manager and click on one of the restart buttons

Comment 5

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

It's enough to install:
* Charcter Idenfier from the above mentioned page
* about:accessibilityenabled

Do we have problems with installing multiple extensions which come with JS or binary components?

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

There is no reason I can think of why we should.

Comment 7

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Hm, about:accessibilityenabled is missing the .xpt file. Could that break registering of all new components?

Comment 8

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Hm, about:accessibilityenabled is missing the .xpt file. Could that break
> registering of all new components?

Probably not. Copying the AboutAccessibilityEnabled.js file into the Character Identifier extension doesn't show the problem.

Comment 9

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

It's getting more interesting. It doesn't matter if you install both add-ons at the same time or not. Once the about:accessibilityenabled extension gets installed the Character Identifier extension will be broken. There can also be a restart in-between both installations.

Comment 10

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Well, the components in those two extensions are using the same CID ({003080df-a8aa-421d-9180-00479e96bfdb}) so it is impossible to have them both registered at the same time.

Comment 11

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I think that this is just a bug in the extensions causing them to conflict with each other.

Comment 12

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Yes! I have changed the GUID of the one component and afterward it works fine.

Comment 13

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Boy, sorry for causing all this confusion.