662788 - There should be a way to specify a minimum version for bootstrapping

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Kai Liu]

Some addons may require a minimum platform version in order to be properly bootstrapped, and there is currently no way to specify that.

For example, consider this scenario: There is an addon requires a UI for user preferences.  Because of the lack of chrome support in a bootstrapped addon, the author is forced to make the addon non-bootstrapped.  With the landing of bug 653637, the author can now have a bootstrap-compatible UI for user preferences, but only if the user is using Firefox 7.  So the author needs to enable boostrapping if the addon is installed in Firefox 7, but not for Firefox 4, 5, or 6.  There is currently no way to do that without creating two separate versions of the addon.

Perhaps something like <bootstrapMinVersion>7.0a1</bootstrapMinVersion>

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

We've never done things like this for any other features and I don't intend to do it for restartlessness.

Comment 2

[Kai Liu]

But bootstrapping is fundamentally different; under normal circumstances, there were easy ways to handle versioning, via chrome.manifest or by programmatically falling back to older code paths.  Neither of which are options with bootstrapping: there is no manifest, and there is no way to programmatically fall back to non-bootstrapped.

So I beg you to reconsider; I'd be willing to implement it if you decide to change your mind about the WF.

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away July 24th - August 16th)]

Dave, so what will authors have to do to get it handled correctly?

Comment 4

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

They'd use version detection and do different things exactly as for any other feature. Being bootstrapped does not mean you can't have UI for options pre-Firefox 7, I'll grant you it makes it a little harder. As we EOL Firefox versions faster now I anticipate that add-ons will only have to support a narrower range of versions and this request is not very simple to implement so I don't believe it is worth the added complexity.

Comment 5

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away July 24th - August 16th)]

Agreed on Dave's conclusion. A workaround is available and checking the list of open bugs for the add-ons manager shows me way more important things to fix or implement. Marking as verified.