(Reposted, because I fell into spam-trap) (Already posted in policy thread, but I received no response.)
Brendan Eich wrote:
We do need an automated update system.
As it happens, I wrote just such a system for Mozilla (for a customer, but under the MPL). Half the code bases on my roaming module. It is used in beta releases of said customer and seems to work mainly, modulo some superfluous updates due to timezone problems in Windows.
With explicit user consent, it
* downloads a manifest file from a certain, preconfigured server * compares the listed files with those installed locally * downloads any mismatching files (into a temporary dir) * tries to make sure that the download worked correctly * moves away the original files * moves the downloaded file into their final location * asks the users to restart the browser
Alternatively, it can download XPIs and install them without user intervention, but they are currently also treated as normal install files, which makes it very impractical in the long term. That's why I am planning to additionally implement an internal patchlevel, and all available XPIs with a patchlevel larger than the running build will be downloaded and installed and may then be deleted.
That is, unless somebody has a better idea. That's why I am writing. How do you think should the update service work?
Ben
P.S. Discussion is of general interest and not secret, so please cc n.p.m.security.
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