Is there any way to speed up the review process?

Add-ons addons.mozilla.org
#1

We’re waiting for almost two months (since Oct 20, 2015) to get our extension reviewed (Ace Stream Web Extension). Our queue position is 30 of 157 at the moment. We can wait as long as needed, but after releasing Firefox 43 our users complain that extension is disabled. We have a lot of users with the extension installed (more than 700k according to our statistics). At the moment we install our extension via side-loading (it’s bundled in our application’s installer). We have to install unsigned version because the review process is still not completed.

And now thousands of our users ask what to do when the extension is disabled after upgrading Firefox to the latest version. What solutions may be available except for waiting the review to complete? Many of our users manually set the option xpinstall.signatures.required=false just because it’s an only available workaround at the moment. But I think it’s not quite good. Will resubmitting our extension as not-listed speed up the review process? Or maybe we can submit the same extension with another id as not-listed to pass preliminary review? Is full review required to enable side-loading for non-listed extension?

Please help. We need any option to speed up our extension signing. We can’t afford to wait several weeks or even months.

#2

As I see it, your bundled extension does not need to be a reviewed version, users will get it through the installation installers, so this specific version could very well be an unlisted version of your add-on which can be instantly signed.

You have a good choice here;

  • Keep waiting for the review to take place so that you have another platform where you offer your add-on

and

  • Create a second add-on (clone of your first) with a different ID (I just added “unlisted-” to the start of my ID, but you can add anything you prefer, but you have to use a different ID), sign it through any of the currently available methods (I sign it manually by uploading the add-on, AMO signs it automatically and then I download that signed add-on from AMO and host it somewhere else) and then use this unlisted signed version in your installers.

Doing this you will always be able to offer the most up to date version through the installers while still waiting for the review to be concluded for your listed add-on version. Be aware, they are not the same add-ons, once the listed version is approved it will not replace the unlisted versions automatically, for all purposes they are still two different add-ons due to their IDs being different.

And remember to setup your own update manifest so that your unlisted add-on can automatically update itself when you release a new version. This also means that you will have to host your unlisted add-on somewhere so that your users can have it updating correctly, otherwise they will always have the same version they got from the installer.

More details can be found here:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Extension_Versioning,_Update_and_Compatibility

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Install_Manifests

#3

Thanks for the advice. It sounds like a good option, so I think we’ll start implementing it right now.

P.S. We already have a custom auto-update system for our software which also updates bundled mozilla extension, so updating unlisted addon isn’t a problem.

#4

The problem arises if you want to just update the add-on and not the software. This is why the add-on should have the auto update setup independently. It is just a suggestion, of course, from here on you choose what you think is best or unnecessary.