641746 - Customizing Firefox: extensions can not be updated to higher version which placed in dir "distribution/extensions".

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 667963

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Pin Zhang [:pzhang] (inactive)]

1. Build customized Firefox distribution with lower version extensions, then install it.
2. Build customized Firefox distribution with higher version extension, then install it.

The lower version extensions can not be updated to higher version.

Comment 1

[Hector Zhao [:hectorz]]

(In reply to Pin Zhang [:pzhang] from comment #0)
> 1. Build customized Firefox distribution with lower version extensions, then
> install it.
> 2. Build customized Firefox distribution with higher version extension, then
> install it.
> 
> The lower version extensions can not be updated to higher version.

IIUC, code in XPIProvider.jsm[1] means the extensions will be updated correctly only if step 2 is built using Fx with a greater version number than Fx version used in step 1.

I understand that most partner distributions will only be repacked with new Firefox release, but the one distributed by Beijing office is updated much more frequently, maybe we could consider distribution version update here in addition to just aAppChanged?

[1]: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9d41d0fa20ad#l2.457

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Yes that is intentional as we don't want to incur the startup penalty of parsing install.rdf everytime the browser starts

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I'm going to enable distribution bundles to allow this if they need to (via distribution.ini).

Comment 4

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I don't think this is worth fixing in my code for bug 667963.

The extensions installed at the lower version should have automatically updated to the higher versions via standard addon updating mechanisms.

So installing the higher version would have had no effect.