747301 - Remove about:plugins

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: General, task)

Description

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Bug 619652 will add extra info to the Addons Manager, such that it will have everything about:plugins does (and more!).

That renders about:plugins superfluous, so we should remove it.

[Well, we should consider keeping the URL since it's somewhat well known. But instead of a custom page it would essentially redirect to the plugins view in about:addons.]

about:support links to about:plugins, but we could probably just add an explicit list right there (as is already done with extensions).

Also, please note that about:plugins can co-exist for a while until we're happy with the about:addons view.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I suspect Firefox for Android and other Mozilla applications without the full-fledged about:addons will want to keep this for debugging and/or support.

Comment 2

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

No free lunch -- other apps are free to take the current about:plugins code and use it if they want.

(AIUI, the only plugin that is supported on Android is Flash, and barely at that.)

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

This seems pretty self-contained and complete at first glance, so unless I'm missing something and this is likely to become a maintenance burden, it seems that lunch is already paid and removing this would only generate extra costs for others (including l10n).

Comment 4

[Blair McBride [:Unfocused] (UNAVAILABLE)]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #1)
> I suspect Firefox for Android and other Mozilla applications without the
> full-fledged about:addons will want to keep this for debugging and/or
> support.

AFAIK, Firefox for Android is the only app that doesn't use Toolkit's Add-ons Manager - and as mentioned in comment 2, the only plugin it supports is Flash.

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #3)
> This seems pretty self-contained and complete at first glance, so unless I'm
> missing something and this is likely to become a maintenance burden

It's already a maintenance burden - keeping it up to date with the Add-ons Manager APIs, new features like click-to-play, the plugin checker page, in-content UI theme changes, and there are various open bugs to make it stay in sync with changes made in the Add-ons Manager.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Blair McBride [:Unfocused] (Back from the dead. Mostly.) from comment #4)
> (In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #3)
> > This seems pretty self-contained and complete at first glance, so unless I'm
> > missing something and this is likely to become a maintenance burden
> 
> It's already a maintenance burden - keeping it up to date with the Add-ons
> Manager APIs,

I expected that about:plugins would use pretty stable APIs, so this surprises me.

> new features like click-to-play,

You mean because this should be exposed as a distinct plugin state in about:plugins?

> the plugin checker page,

That's no crucial about:plugins feature, just a convenient link. I'm not sure what plans exist for the plugin checker page. If e.g. we're getting rid of it in favor of a built in UI, then we could just remove that link.

> in-content UI theme changes,

This page looks pretty generic (much like e.g. about:support) and shouldn't need special treatment, I would think.

However, I agree it might be good to get rid of about:plugins, if it's really getting in people's way.

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

The addons manager will not have the complete list of addons in all cases, and about:plugins is useful for copy-paste debugging. I do not wish it to be removed, and my team will keep it maintained.

Comment 7

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #6)
> The addons manager will not have the complete list of addons in all cases,
> and about:plugins is useful for copy-paste debugging. I do not wish it to be
> removed, and my team will keep it maintained.

about:plugins uses the add-ons manager API to get the list of plugins now, as does the add-ons manager UI so I'm not sure what would be listed in about:plugins but not about:addons.

Comment 8

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

I'm not thrilled to have 2 UIs that are largely duplicates of each other -- as a general principle, it would be better to have 1 that does what people need.

But neither do I feel strongly about it. Benjamin can be on hook for owning about:plugins, and this problem will hopefully resolve itself in a few years when plugins are dead dead dead (then we can remove about:plugins _and_ the plugins section of the addon manager!).

Comment 9

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #6)
> The addons manager will not have the complete list of addons in all cases,
> and about:plugins is useful for copy-paste debugging. I do not wish it to be
> removed, and my team will keep it maintained.

Don't forget about your bug #638769 and that about:plugins info can be merged into about:support like Extensions, so we can in the near future remove about:plugins.

How about that? Both sides will be happy :)

Comment 10

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] from comment #9)
>we can
we could...

Comment 11

[Sören Hentzschel]

... and before removing about:plugins, about:addons should take into account plugin.expose_full_path... ;)

Comment 12

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

But only for user eyes, for web it should be disabled.

Comment 13

[Gregory Pappas [:gregp]]

Bug 1741595 killed about:plugins on Android so I'm reopening this, just in case renewed interest ever materializes.

Comment 14

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I would take a patch here, but this isn't a priority.

Comment 15

[:Gijs (he/him)]

See also discussion in bug 1738533 - a patch would need to move some of the info in about:plugins to about:addons.

Comment 16

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #15)

See also discussion in bug 1738533 - a patch would need to move some of the info in about:plugins to about:addons.

From what I can see the only info not already in about:addons at this point is the path to the CDM and looking in my profile that appears to always be <ProfD>/<CDM ID>/<Version> so I'm not sure we actually need to move that.

Comment 17

[:Gijs (he/him)]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=try&revision=f9329890406a5e160fdf32a551d0110664724f46

Comment 18

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Bug 747301 - remove about:plugins and some other unused plugin-related code, r?Mossop!,padenot!,handyman!

Comment 19

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

FYI Media Teams are ok with this change.

Comment 20

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/cdbe3297967a
remove about:plugins and some other unused plugin-related code, r=mossop,handyman,fluent-reviewers,extension-reviewers,desktop-theme-reviewers,bolsson,dao,geckoview-reviewers,owlish,robwu

Comment 21

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cdbe3297967a