631431 - About:addons should mark which addons can be updated without a restart

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Will Pittenger]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)

Now that Jetpack allows extensions to be upgraded without restarting the application, I think the addon manager should have an indicator marking them.  Presumably this would also mark addons that can be enabled, disabled, or uninstalled without a restart.  (On a related note, perhaps AMO should mark addons that don't require a restart to install in the current application, that is, the app used to reach the AMO page.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Visit about:addons
2.Can you tell what extensions can be updated without a restart?
3.
Actual Results:  
No you can't.

Expected Results:  
Users should be kept advised of what upgrades, require a restart--especially if extensions are being updated automatically

Comment 1

[Will Pittenger]

Wrong build identifier.  Should have been Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b10) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b10

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

We already do subtly hint at this in the tooltips on the enable/disable buttons. Why would this matter for the upgrade case specifically though?

Comment 3

[Will Pittenger]

Some users want to know when extensions are being updated.  I like being kept aware.  If a restart isn't needed, the update could turn out to be silent.  Just as bad, some extensions, when updated, open a new tab with release notes.  That would be in your way if you were busy at the time.

Comment 4

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

So the problem seems to be that we just don't notify when an add-on has been updated? I'm not sure how marking add-ons as not needing an update to restart helps for the situations you describe, nor can we actually know that fact ahead of time.

Comment 5

[Will Pittenger]

Don't you mean "not needing a *restart* to *update*"?

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

yes

Comment 7

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Don't we have a flag in the database we could use? I see it as a problem when you update a restartless add-on by accident and can't revert the update because it has been instantly applied.

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Don't we have a flag in the database we could use? I see it as a problem when
> you update a restartless add-on by accident and can't revert the update because
> it has been instantly applied.

We do but I don't really know what this would look like nor do I think it helps any case mentioned in this bug so far. For your point we'd want an undo option for updates if you accidentally did it

Comment 9

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> We do but I don't really know what this would look like nor do I think it helps
> any case mentioned in this bug so far. For your point we'd want an undo option
> for updates if you accidentally did it

Given our goal to have more and more restartless add-ons and that we would like to see that authors drop the old-style extensions in the future, we would probably have to mark those old-style extensions instead.

Personally I wouldn't see a problem with a wontfix once bug 653066 has been fixed and users can undo the update of a restartless extension.

Comment 11

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

All supportd addon types are now restartless