824197 - Marketplace (prod) does not keep package name in sync between the mini-manifest and app manifest for packaged apps

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Marketplace Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Brian Smith (:briansmith, :bsmith, use NEEDINFO?)]

Attachment: Patch to Gecko to help diagnose this

I tried to install the app from:
https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/privileged-app-test-1/?src=mkt-search

The installation fails because the app name in the mini-manifest does not match the app manifest within the jar. If I comment out the check for name matching in AppUtils.jsm, then the package installs successfully (after the marketplace-dev cert has been replaced with the marketplace-prod cert in Gecko) in B2G desktop.

The attached patch helped me diagnose this problem.

Comment 1

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Rob - I thought our manifest cron job picked up new names out of manifests.  Does our package support do the same?  It should if not.

Comment 2

[Rob Hudson [:robhudson]]

I think the problem is we have 2 sources of app name:

1. The app name inside the package manifest
2. The app name as entered into the devhub

The devhub app name (#2) is pre-populated with the contents of the package's manifest during the submission flow but we allow the developer to change it. From there on we use the devhub app name everywhere on marketplace.

If we're going to depend on the devhub name matching the manifest name, perhaps we shouldn't allow the developer to change it on the devhub pages? Either that or if they do change it, automatically update the package manifest?

Personally, I'm not in favor of automatically editing the submitted package's manifest contents so I'd opt for not being able to edit the app name.

We do have a cron that detects app name changes but that's for hosted apps, not packaged apps. It's something we could add as part of uploading a new version flow. That brings a few questions about whether packages should be allowed to change their name between versions and how we handle that?

Comment 3

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Rob Hudson [:robhudson] from comment #2)
> I think the problem is we have 2 sources of app name:
> 
> 1. The app name inside the package manifest
> 2. The app name as entered into the devhub
> 
> The devhub app name (#2) is pre-populated with the contents of the package's
> manifest during the submission flow but we allow the developer to change it.
> From there on we use the devhub app name everywhere on marketplace.
> 
> If we're going to depend on the devhub name matching the manifest name,
> perhaps we shouldn't allow the developer to change it on the devhub pages?
> Either that or if they do change it, automatically update the package
> manifest?
> 
> Personally, I'm not in favor of automatically editing the submitted
> package's manifest contents so I'd opt for not being able to edit the app
> name.
> 
> We do have a cron that detects app name changes but that's for hosted apps,
> not packaged apps. It's something we could add as part of uploading a new
> version flow. That brings a few questions about whether packages should be
> allowed to change their name between versions and how we handle that?

From the client-side - I believe we allow the name to be different on a packaged app update. Julien can correct me if I'm wrong.

Sounds like product input is needed here. I'd like to know what Apple App Store and Android App Store does equivalently in this situation, get a tradeoffs analysis of each approach, and know what our best option is.

Comment 4

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

For packaged apps, we indeed have two manifests: one inside the archive and one to allow installation and update (called update/mini manifest).

During install/update, in most apps, we use the manifest name if we have this information (which we have not for the first install) and otherwise the update manifest name. So I believe that we only use the update manifest name at the first install (I originally filed Bug 823433 to change this but I agree with Jason that this not a good idea).

After installing/updating, I believe that in gecko we use the new manifest for all informations, and therefore that we get the new name in all apps, but I'd like Fabrice's confirmation for that.

Comment 5

[Rob Hudson [:robhudson]]

Sorry for the confusion. I do the difference between the mini-manifest and the package's manifest.

What I was trying to explain above is we allow the developer to change the app name that the Marketplace stores in their database, and if the developer does change the app name, the name we store in our database is now different than the app name stored in the package's manifest. And it is the app name in the database that we use to show in the various pages on the Marketplace website (search listings, detail page, etc) and is also what I'm using to populate the name field in the mini-manifest.

As an example, this is the app edit page on Marketplace where we can edit the app name:
http://cl.ly/image/2R2I1t130L1b

A quick fix would be to not use the db app name in the mini-manifest and to pull the app name from the package's manifest.

The potential for a difference still exists between the rest of the Marketplace pages and the mini-manifest and is something separate we should solve.

Comment 6

[krupa raj[:krupa]]

> The potential for a difference still exists between the rest of the
> Marketplace pages and the mini-manifest and is something separate we should
> solve.

that is bug 753779.

Comment 7

[Rob Hudson [:robhudson]]

This fixes the discrepancy between the package manifest and the mini-manifest. Pushed to our dev server and will be pushed to prod tomorrow.

https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni/commit/c38ec60