We released beta versions with update.rdf and we want to upgrade them to production. I tried to run jpm xpi with the options --update-link and --update-url but it doesn’t work, and I also didn’t find it documented on this page. How can we upgrade our beta users to production? We have about 8,000 users who use our beta version on Firefox.
If you want to move your users from an unlisted version to the listed version, then all you need to do is update those users with a version that doesn’t have an updateURL set. Add-ons without an updateURL will check for updates on AMO.
I suspect the issue is not how to get users from self-host onto AMO, which is easy, but how to get beta users back onto a release version, which is not. Beta users (development channel) normally stay on the development channel until they decide to manually move to the release channel. Maybe once they “lose contact” with the beta channel because the updateUrl got removed, they will get switched to the release version on AMO? Will that really happen? Maybe this is irrelevant because the OP didn’t really issue beta versions, just private limited-edition releases from their own server …
Since @uri-wisestamp mentioned a custom updateURL, I assumed it wasn’t referring to an AMO beta channel. Like you said, users can only manually move back to the main channel in that case, which is a bit of a hassle. If the question is about moving users to a different update channel for an unlisted add-on, it should just be a matter of pointing the updateURL to the right place.
Thank you both for your replies, I updated the update.rdf file with the URL of our last version (4.5.60), and I checked with Firefox profiles which I had with our beta versions installed (which were unsigned versions), some profiles got updated to version 4.5.60, but other profiles were not able to update and our extension got disabled (on Firefox 43.0). But anyway if users will contact our support they will show them how to install our latest version, if the version they have got disabled.
Your update.rdf file appears to contain an actual beta (development channel) version number (4.3.20beta), but you have it linked directly to an AMO version 4.5.60. I’m not sure that is reliable. I don’t know if 4.3.20beta was the “current” beta version before this change.
So you seem to have two different issues. First is to get users from the development channel onto the live addon version, which isn’t simple. Obviously this can be done manually. I believe it can also be done by completely removing all beta versions from AMO, but since you’re not currently hosted on AMO I don’t know how that will work.
The second issue is to move users from your own host onto AMO. This is relatively easy. Just update them through your update.rdf file to a version which does not include the updateUrl field. Then they will receive future updates from AMO. I haven’t tried this directly linking to an existing AMO version from update.rdf, but I guess that would work too. Make sure that the version is actually bumped or people won’t be moved.
Linking directly from an update.rdf that claims to be installing a beta version 4.3.20beta and actually trying to install a version 4.5.60 is a real leap in the dark. I’m not surprised it is causing some issues. You could of course rebrand 4.5.60 as 4.5.60beta and put it on your own host, then people will have the latest code. Then issue some publicity to your beta users to get them onto a release version if you don’t want to continue with the beta versions.
Thanks for your comment, actually it was a bug. I couldn’t create the update.rdf file with jpm, so I edited it manually. But now I fixed it and it seems to work, thanks! We don’t want to notify our beta users but just to upgrade them to our latest version. I’m trying to release a new version now to our QA team but jpm is not working, please see at Validation took too long to complete