Add-ons/Bugs

This page outlines the plans to deal with extension bugs in Firefox 57 and beyond.

Before Firefox 57

There are currently multiple places a bug can end up in Bugzilla around an extension.

1. Toolkit > WebExtensions: Compatibility (Triage owner: Andy)
2. Toolkit > Blocklisting (Triage owner: Jorge)
3. Firefox > Extension Compatibility (Triage owner: Jorge)
4. Tech Evangelism > Add-ons (no Triage owner)

Some of these bugs are dealt with, in that the owner of the extension is notified. This tends to work better with extensions where the owner has an account on Bugzilla. Most extension authors [citation-needed] have their own bug tracking system eg. github.

The majority of bugs in the Firefox > Extension Compatibility component are for legacy extensions that will no longer be relevant in Firefox 57 and beyond.

Firefox 57 and Beyond

Let's limit the number of components down to:

1. Toolkit > WebExtensions: Compatibility (Triage owner: Andy)
2. Toolkit > Blocklisting (Triage owner: Jorge)

The WebExtensions: Compatibility component is for bugs where Firefox has broken something for an extension. This is also used for browser compatibility although adding to 1392434 would be appreciated for those.

The Blocklisting component would still be needed to track mis-behaving extensions and other block listing requests.

Legacy extension bugs will no longer stay open in Bugzilla unless they have a clear product or component (for example Thunderbird or Seamonkey).

Triaging bugs

1. Check to see if it's a legacy extension or WebExtension. If it's a legacy extension, see if there's a matching component and move it over there. Otherwise close it, a comment could be "Firefox no longer supports legacy extensions, if this about an extension on a version of Firefox older than Firefox 57, please contact the extension author."
2. If the bug is about something that should be blocked, then it should be moved to Toolkit > Blocklisting.
3. If the bug is something that should be changed in Firefox or is otherwise actionable by Mozilla then it should go through the standard triage process.
4. If the Toolkit > WebExtensions: Compatibility component is appropriate, move over to there.
5. Otherwise we ask the user to file it with the add-on author, a comment could be "We think this is because of a bug in the extension, not in Firefox. Please contact the extension author about this bug instead."

Old bugs

There are over 600 bugs in Firefox > Extension Compatibility. Anything that is not about WebExtensions is not relevant and can be closed. I suggest that we do something similar to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/OldBugs and close all bugs (or move them to component 3 above) from before Jan 2016.

The remainder can be manually triaged.