749043 - Installing two applications with different manifest metadata from the same origin results in 2nd app manifest data overwriting the 1st app's manifest data, but the 1st app manifest data has shortcuts left behind

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox Graveyard :: Web Apps, defect, P2)

Description

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Steps:

1. Go to apps.mozillalabs.com/appdir
2. Install Zilzer or Roundball natively
3. Install the other app not installed in step 2
4. Find the Zilzer and Roundball references (e.g. desktop shortcut, start menu)

Expected:

Needs to be better defined, but this is not allowed in the current design of the mozapps API. The problem here is that a developer screws up and uses the mozapps API incorrectly to allow two apps to be installed off the same origin, the consumer of the application suffers. I would expect the correct behavior would be a need to handle this issue more gracefully to the consumer (e.g. a 500 error?).

Actual:

Both applications are installed with the icon of the first app that was installed. Trying to use the first app with any shortcuts will show them the error that the application no longer exists.

Additional Notes:

If the developer screws up with their server configuration, the consumer the app should suffer minimally. We should find a way to reduce the cost of the developer's mistake, as it should not be at the expense of the consumer heavily (fail gracefully).

Comment 1

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

From what I know, an application is identified by its origin, so two applications cannot exist from the same origin

Comment 2

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

nvm, I see that you mentioned this in the Expected block

Comment 3

[Tim Abraldes [:TimAbraldes] [:tabraldes]]

I think the expected behavior here is that the first app is completely removed and the second one replaces it.  It sounds like the bug is that shortcuts were left over from the installation of the first app.

Comment 4

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Tim Abraldes from comment #3)
> I think the expected behavior here is that the first app is completely
> removed and the second one replaces it.  It sounds like the bug is that
> shortcuts were left over from the installation of the first app.

Yup, that's correct.

Comment 5

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Note - This issue applies to linux as well.

Comment 6

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Marking for re-triage - so apparently this could be problematic in a scenario where an app developer decides to update the name of their existing application as well. This could prove to be a problem for if a user needs to install a newer version of an app.

Comment 7

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Related bug - bug 753660.

Comment 8

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

The shortcuts names are AppName + ".lnk", so it isn't so simple to delete them if the developer changes the name of the application.

Comment 9

[Jonah Ho (AAstar)]

I can confirm this on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:16.0) Gecko/16.0 Firefox/16.0.

Shouldn't the expected behaviour be that no app overwrites the other?  The end user might want to have both apps installed at the same time.

Comment 10

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

(In reply to Jonah Ho (FireChemist) from comment #9)
> Shouldn't the expected behaviour be that no app overwrites the other?  The
> end user might want to have both apps installed at the same time.

We allow a single app for each origin.

Comment 11

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

We're going to support multiple apps per origin and this won't be valid anymore. In the meantime we're forbidding reinstallations, so this isn't valid anyway.