Chrome Web Store needs a Rollback button

[Hao Nguyen]

Since extension submission needs to go through manual reviews in Chrome Web Store that can take arbitrarily long time, if a new version has a serious issue, it is very hard to push forward an emergency fix. Instead, can we simply have a button that can immediately rollback to a previously approved version?

Alternatively, allow decreasing the percentage in partial rollout. Currently it only allows you to increase the percentage, so if you rollout to 50% and realized that you have a serious bug, you can't rollback to 0%. I don't understand the point of partial rollout of you can only roll forward...

This is especially important now that extensions are trying to migrate to MV3. We are going to run into issues.

Hao

[Robbi]

I don't think it's a good idea to allow rollback to a previous working version.
The new version, installed by some users, could modify some persistent data (storage) and these changings might be hard\impossible to be reversed to the previous state.
However, the developer should have the option to request (via a button) the stop of review process in order to upload a bugfixed version.
This feature is already shipped in MS Edge Store.

[Hao Nguyen]

The Rollback button would be a choice for the developer to use. They can choose not to use it if they know that rolling back is impossible. This is just like when you roll out a server. If the rollout is causing issues, the developer should be allowed to rollback. There are some rare cases where rolling back is impossible, but that is a choice for the developer to make. In the past 2 years, I have made 35 version updates to my extension. Only 1 of them is impossible to rollback. In the same time frame, there were at least 3 occasions where I wish I can just rollback instead of leaving some users in a broken state for some unknown amount of time.

Try telling an SRE that they can never rollback any release because there is a rare chance that some rollbacks will be impossible...

Alternatively, if the submission is identical to a previous submission except for the version number, can that be automatically approved? Also if the only changes are in the store listing description, can that skip the manual review process?

[Robbi]

> Alternatively, if the submission is identical to a previous submission except for the version number, can that be automatically approved?

> Also if the only changes are in the store listing description, can that skip the manual review process?

They are all possible ways.

The latter, however, would "almost certainly" cause delays in the review process. If you need to go back to a new path (i.e. if you need to make changes that won't break the already installed extension) then, as you wrote, increase the version number and don't get too mental.

Of course you can also request the rollback feature to the Chrome team.

[Gaurang Tandon]

Thanks for posting this. It would really improve both the developer experience and user experience if this feature is made available in the CWS.

Developer experience because the developers can then push out more frequent updates, knowing that if there's an issue, they can always rollback.

User experience because if the devs make a mistake, the devs will roll it back (hopefully) and then the user can continue their work peacefully with earlier version of the extension.

[Robbi]

Maybe that's also why MS Edge store takes about a week to review extensions.

A week is a good time to realize that you have introduced a bug and therefore request the cancellation of the review process.

We should remember the main testers are ourselves!!!

In my opinion, it is a deliberate time put on purpose to demotivate developers who update their extensions too often with small changes (such as a typo or changes in the css).

Rollback would undoubtedly be cool, also because it's supposed to be instantaneous (since the restored version has already passed its review), but as I said in my first post it's a double-edged sword. Think of an indexed db updated to a new version and then rolled back...

They are only policies, perhaps questionable, but nonetheless  policies.

[Artem Harutyunyan]

The ability to re-publish a previously approved version without a new review cycle would be very helpful to have. It wouldn't be a silver bullet and might not be applicable in certain situations (like when the newer version introduced some backward incompatible schema changes in persistence), but it will definitely be useful. 

What would also be useful (especially in the MV3 context) is the ability to limit rollout to a certain number of users. Right now as soon as the new version is published all new users are going to get it (regardless of the rollout percentage). 

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[Robbi]

> Of course you can also request the rollback feature to the Chrome team.

Someone once said: "Ask and it will be given to you!"

I root for this cause.