extension and theme urls - past present and future
Jesper Kristensen
rapidly, and it seems to change further in the futrure
History as of my memory:
https://update.mozilla.org/?app=firefox.... (past)
https://addons.mozilla.org/?app=firefox.... (past)
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/... (present)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/... (future)
In Firefox 1.5.0.6, links from the application to the website are broken (at
least for da locale). They either returns 404s, never ending circular
redirects or weird cookie problems.
I think we should do two things about this:
1: Make the links work now
2: Prevent these problems in the future
== 1: Make the links work now ==
http://lxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla1.8.0/search?string=update.mozilla.org
It seems to me that there is a lot of difference from locale to locale in the
links. The Mozilla server infrastructure should redirect properly from old
urls to new urls until updated versions of Firefox (and Thunderbird ??) are
released.
This should be done sooner rather than later. We are getting a lot of
questions in our local forum about these dead links.
== 2: Prevent these problems in the future ==
How should we prevent this url mismatch in the future? AFAIK we are planning
to change the urls to addons AGAIN, because we now want to put the locale in
it. This will create even more broken links across different versions of the
client applications.
I think that the addons site urls is not near stable enough, to be able to
link to them directly from the client applications. I would propose Mozilla
make some kind of server side abstraction layer: Links from Firefox should
follow an url structure like:
http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/getextensions . This page
could then redirect to the correct url at AMO. This way future url changes at
AMO (i am convinced there will be more) could be done transparently without
breaking links from Firefox. What do you think of it? Do you have a better
solution? The current addons url situation is not sustainable.
End note: is this the right news group to use, or should i use another group
or even bugzilla? If bugzilla, please tell me how - it is too complex for me
to figure out how to use it.
Axel Hecht
> in the past, urls to the mozilla extensions and themes site has changed
> rapidly, and it seems to change further in the futrure
>
> History as of my memory:
> https://update.mozilla.org/?app=firefox.... (past)
> https://addons.mozilla.org/?app=firefox.... (past)
> https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/... (present)
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/... (future)
>
> In Firefox 1.5.0.6, links from the application to the website are broken
> (at least for da locale). They either returns 404s, never ending
> circular redirects or weird cookie problems.
>
> I think we should do two things about this:
> 1: Make the links work now
> 2: Prevent these problems in the future
>
> == 1: Make the links work now ==
> http://lxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla1.8.0/search?string=update.mozilla.org
>
> It seems to me that there is a lot of difference from locale to locale
> in the links. The Mozilla server infrastructure should redirect properly
> from old urls to new urls until updated versions of Firefox (and
> Thunderbird ??) are released.
>
> This should be done sooner rather than later. We are getting a lot of
> questions in our local forum about these dead links.
Could you file a bug on this? This is just amo requiring more redirects
internally.
http://lxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla1.8.0/search?string=update.mozilla.org/ext
and the corresponding theme link seem to be more on focus.
>
> == 2: Prevent these problems in the future ==
> How should we prevent this url mismatch in the future? AFAIK we are
> planning to change the urls to addons AGAIN, because we now want to put
> the locale in it. This will create even more broken links across
> different versions of the client applications.
>
> I think that the addons site urls is not near stable enough, to be able
> to link to them directly from the client applications. I would propose
> Mozilla make some kind of server side abstraction layer: Links from
> Firefox should follow an url structure like:
> http://en-US.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/getextensions . This page
> could then redirect to the correct url at AMO. This way future url
> changes at AMO (i am convinced there will be more) could be done
> transparently without breaking links from Firefox. What do you think of
> it? Do you have a better solution? The current addons url situation is
> not sustainable.
This is not really true, the links will be
ab-CD.addons.mozilla.com/ab-CD...
That is part of a URL structure that has been signed off by both AMO
folks and IT folks, so those should be pretty good. If we happen to have
a problem with those in the future, we could probably use addons2 as
service name and make CNAME aliases for addons to something that
redirects as appropriate.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348076 is the focal bug
here. I don't have the definite url structure for amo in my head right
now, sorry. But as the above bug mentions, we'll be moving them out from
l10n and make them generated, so that the amount of variations will
shrink considerably. That should keep us from having problems like the
danish build linking to a 404, as all those urls can not only be
generated automagically, but tested as well.
> End note: is this the right news group to use, or should i use another
> group or even bugzilla? If bugzilla, please tell me how - it is too
> complex for me to figure out how to use it.
In terms of 404, just file a bug on Other products, addons.mozilla.org
(server software), public pages. I would expect that to catch the right
folks.
Axel
Marek Stepien
> In Firefox 1.5.0.6, links from the application to the website are broken
> (at least for da locale). They either returns 404s, never ending
> circular redirects or weird cookie problems.
I filed a bug some time ago, it was fixed, but is now broken again.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345646
--
Marek Stępień <mar...@aviary.pl>
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