659056 - Installing or updating using the channel switcher a version that is already installed overwrites the existing installation's information in the registry.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[Andrei Câmpeanu]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0

I had both the recently released Beta version and the Aurora version installed, side-by-side. Soon after installing the beta, I started toying with the update channels and had it update to Aurora and back to beta.
So I figured I'd uninstall Aurora, now that I could just switch between the two through the beta installation. Checking my installed programs list, Aurora wasn't listed there, anymore.

The files of the installed Aurora copy I had from the start are still on the disk.
My assumption is that the channel switching process was treated as an uninstall/install process; thus, when I switched to the Aurora channel on the beta copy and updated, it wrote the install information on top of the Aurora info that was already present.

Toying some more with switching channels, I noticed that the Firefox entry in the Add/Remore Programs list was changing accordingly, which is what gave me the hint to what was happening.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install two or more distinct versions (channel wise) of Firefox, in any order; at least one must feature the channel switcher;
2. Switch the channel of one of the Firefox installations to that of one of the others and update.

Actual Results:  
During the update process, the installation information of the separate Firefox copy you're updating the former copy to is overwritten.

Expected Results:  
The two installations should remain separate, or the user should be notified and given the choice of uninstalling the other copy.

I only tested this on an x86 Windows 7 box, but the nature of this should be persistent across the whole Windows platform. I don't have much expertise on Mac/Linux, so I'm not sure how this may behave in those cases.

Comment 1

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

It has been decided that channel switching will be removed in bug 659972 so resolving wontfix