Having been bitten by https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1176697 , I decided to perform an experiment; perform an auto-update to a non-matching extension ID. This experiment was successful. Are there any problems with this approach?
If there is already the new extension installed I have found that the update process does not go cleanly. It updates, but then it hangs and does not remove the old extension. It is an edge case, and maybe not that likely to happen.
Been using this process to push some unlisted add-ons onto AMO with out any other problems.
Thank you, that’s good to know.
How did you do that “auto-update to a non-matching extension ID”?
The same way as a normal auto-update. The update file’s description attribute uses the old ID, but the updateLink points to an extension which has a non-matching ID. Basically, the old extension won’t know it’s getting a non-matching version until the XPI has already been downloaded, and at that point it installs it anyways.