Instant revert to last known good Chrome extension package

[Torrey Umland]

Hello,

I am looking for a recommendation on the best way to plan for quickly reverting to the previous extension package. For release planning purposes, we want to have the ability to instantly revert to a last known good package.

I believe the best way to do this currently is to pre-build a package with a higher version number that contains the old revisions of our code. Then, submit the higher-version-# package to the app store for approval prior to our release. Then, if an issue arises during our release, we can immediately publish the package with higher build # to revert to the previous known good code. Finally, in-field browsers experiencing an issue can manually update the Chrome extension to resolve the issue.

Is it possible to use the "Percentage Rollout" options as an alternative? When using the app store setting for percent gradual release, is it possible to move the percent backwards. For example, if we start at 1% rollout, and then increase to 10%, and then find a serious issue, can we then revert back to 0% to mitigate the risk that more customers experience the problem?

Also if the above downgrade scenario is possible, what does it mean for persisted data (i.e. local storage)? Will local storage contents be reset upon downgrade?

Do you know any other strategies we can use for instantly reverting extension packages in the Chrome Web Store?

Thank you!

[Torrey Umland]

Hello,

I'd like to bump this thread. Any guidance here is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Torrey,

Sorry for missing this!

At the moment, the idea you had of preparing a release with a higher version number to submit if there are issues seems best.

It isn't possible to reduce a percentage rollout I'm afraid since Chrome installs will only accept extension updates to a higher version.

Slightly longer term - we've definitely heard the feedback for this sort of thing and we're working on a version rollback feature that we hope to release before the MV2 deprecation starts in June next year.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

This electronic communication and the information and any files transmitted with it, or attached to it, are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is confidential, legally privileged, protected by privacy laws, or otherwise restricted from disclosure to anyone else. If you are not the intended recipient or the person responsible for delivering the e-mail to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, copying, distributing, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you received this e-mail in error, please return the e-mail to the sender, delete it from your computer, and destroy any printed copy of it.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium Extensions" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chromium-extens...@chromium.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/8231fc87-69c4-431e-a1e9-644b3df09528n%40chromium.org.

[Ottis]

Thanks Oliver, this is great! It is excruciatingly painful to wait for several days for a review to complete when a critical bug is accidentally released.

[Aleem Mawani]

@Oliver can you describe the rollback feature a bit more and how it'd work? Specifically, once a developer chooses to do a rollback, how long before chrome will rollback the extension? Is it kind of the same as any other update to an extension that chrome gradually rolls out?

[Aleem Mawani]

The reason I ask is we're planning on bundling multiple versions of our code into each extension package (the latest version as well as the most recent N versions). Then having a remote loaded configuration file tell the extension which version of the code to use. This way if we want to do a rollback, we just update the config file on the server and the user just needs to refresh the page for the extension to run the older code.

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Aleem,

We briefly touched on this at the Ad Filtering Dev Summit, so you might be interested in that talk if you haven't seen it already: https://youtu.be/Vw1eIaRuy7w?t=24669

Chrome is only able to update to newer versions of an extension, so it would be a normal update (same flow/timing) with a higher version number. We haven't shared many details beyond that yet, but hopefully that's helpful :)

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Aleem Mawani]

Oh thats super helpful and would prob make it unnecessary to bundle multiple versions in a single extension. 

Any ideas when you'll be sharing more on this functionality and its timing?

ᐧ

[Oliver Dunk]

Probably closer to the release and by June :)

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB