Hi, Note, I've already registered a placeholder blueprint for this [1].
We currently have a couple of problems with the Firefox and Thunderbird upgrade experience, which users of Mozilla's update service don't experience (ie, everybody on Windows, Mac, or anyone using mozilla.org binaries on Linux). 1) A long standing issue we have is that upgrades totally break all currently running instances of Firefox or Thunderbird until they are restarted. This is made worse because we move the install location around between updates, but pulling the rug from underneath any running instance is probably never going to work reliably, even if the install location doesn't change. Note, this isn't just an issue with Mozilla applications - we just notice it more because we update them a lot more frequently than anything else in the archive. As another example, there was a Glade -> GtkBuilder transition a few cycles ago, where upgrades between distro-versions broke things such as the currently running instance of gnome-panel [2] due to the glade files being replaced with gtkbuilder ui files. I just wanted to point this out before people start blaming Firefox that this is really a problem with how our package manager works... Upstream are currently planning work around silent updates, and they have a wiki page documenting how their update process will probably work [3]. We might be able to learn some things from this. 2) We have no way of warning people if any of their addons might stop working when we offer them an upgrade. People using upstream builds are notified before an upgrade if any of their addons aren't compatible with the update, and if there are no addon updates available to fix this. Do we want to provide such functionality, bearing in mind: - We haven't had that many bug reports yet from users complaining of addons being incompatible after an upgrade, although there have been 1 or 2. - As of the time of writing, 92% of addons on AMO are compatible with the current Firefox beta (due to be released on November 8th). However, approximately 75% of addons in use are not hosted on AMO [4]. - From Firefox 10 (Jan 31st, 2012), addons are going to default to being compatible, with some exceptions (addons with binary components) [4]. Anyway, some things to think about. Regards Chris [1] - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-p-mozilla-upgrade-experience [2] - https://launchpad.net/bugs/422568 [3] - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Background_Updates [4] - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compatible -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop