Users report: Download Corrupt / Download doesn't finish? Web Extension, works for most

Add-ons addons.mozilla.org
#1

The latest version of my Social Fixer extension just got approved: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/socialfixer/

I announced it to users, and right away I started getting problem reports from some users (not most). I even got two 1-star reviews saying:

Downloading, downloading, downloading… when will it be installed? 285kb out of 285kb.

I tried many times to install the file, but I always get the error “file corrupt”.

Has anyone else seen this? Any idea what the problem is?

A few users were apparently using Waterfox. I downloaded that, and I also get the same problem of it downloading 285kb out of 285kb, then hanging. I haven’t reproduced the “corrupt” error yet.

Are there any known causes of these problems? Thanks!

#2

I tried right now and there wasn’t any problem. It could be that there were some serve issues at the time.

#3

I have the same issue on my new WebExtension : https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/grepolistoolkit-le-script/

Not the only one, multiple users have the same problem … and I can’t help them …

#4

I’m getting even more reports of a corrupt download.

Is there any info about this being a known issue? I can’t isolate the source. My package seems to be fine, otherwise it wouldn’t work for most people and wouldn’t have passed review.

I don’t know if the problem is the add-ons server, the browser versions being used, or some other issue?

#5

From the latest reports, it sounds like FF48/49 might be giving the corrupt file warning, while FF50 works fine. I thought web extensions were supported from FF48? Might there be some issue that was fixed in 50?

#6

Update: It looks like maybe a missing “applications” key might be causing problems in FF48/49. It works fine in FF50 without it. The docs say it’s not required, but it looks like earlier implementations of Web Extensions do require it?

#7

Yeah, it used to be required, but then it was dropped once we made IDs optional.

#8

The page at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/applications says “Mandatory before Firefox 48” which I’m not sure is correct. I’m still doing tests to see if it consistently fails in FF<50. Most of the failures come from FF48 and 49, so maybe this statement is not correct, if this key is indeed the problem.

Or, it might be a different problem altogether. It’s very difficult to diagnose with a vague error message and inconsistent results.

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