Security/Features/Plugin background updating

Summary

Updating plugins currently is an inconsistent and difficult process for users, hence most plugins are not kept up to date in a timely fashion. We should have the same update experience for plugins that we currently have for Firefox add-ons.

Team

• Feature Manager: Lucas Adamski
• Lead Developer:
• Product Manager:
• QA:
• UX:
• Accessibility:
• Security:
• Privacy:

Release Requirements

• Defined format for installation packages
• Defined criteria for installer behavior (EULA, bundling, etc)
• Defined versioning service / scheme
• Threat model for feature
• Firefox implementation to support all the above

Designs

We should research desired plugin updating behavior to determine how we'd like the model to work (i.e. silent or near-silent updates like add-ons). We then need to determine feasibility of model by gathering requirements from plugin vendors to see what sort of models they could support, and on which platforms.

Next Steps & Open Issues

• Define ideal plugin lifecycle

Related Bugs & Dependencies

See plugins roadmap for some high-level requirements and thoughts: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Plugins:Roadmap

Risks

• We could introduce security issues around installation and updating of plugins.
• We could break plugins if we have bugs in the installer model
• Plugin vendors would need to cooperate

Test Plans

Goals

• Make plugins as easy to manage and update as add-ons.

Non-Goals

Other Stuff