Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
Categories: developers policy

AMO updates on version number re-use

5 responses

With recent changes, addons.mozilla.org (AMO) now more strictly enforces our rule requiring version numbers for add-ons to be unique.

Previously, the website allowed some edge cases where if a version was deleted or disabled before we reviewed it, a new version with the same version number could be uploaded.  This caused issues with our CDN where the old xpi was cached. The hash (used for verification) could be wrong so the install would fail, and any users who installed the old xpi would fail to get the update to the ‘real’ version.

Now, once a version has been uploaded to AMO with a version number, you will be unable to use it again. Deleting or disabling the version won’t release the version number for re-use.  This restriction applies to add-ons that are uploaded for signing and external listing as well as ones listed on AMO.

We’re aware this will cause some irritation to developers when they try to upload again, and that perfect version “10.0.0.0” may be lost due to a hasty upload, but we believe the user benefits in this case outweigh the extra restriction on developers.

5 comments on “AMO updates on version number re-use”

  1. Ben Basson wrote on

    Is it possible to upload a new add-on version for automatic validation / security checks, etc without “using up” the version number?

    If I get validation warnings after upload, I might want to do something about them before formally submitting the version for review. It’s kind of rubbish to expect add-on authors to commit to a new version number every time in this instance.

    1. Michael Kaply wrote on

      You can do that by uploading your add-on to the validator directly:

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addon/validate

    2. Andrew Williamson wrote on

      The version only gets created after you confirm by clicking the ‘add version’ button – this is after the validation takes place and you get the report. If after the validation you want to make changes and try again with the same version number you can do so as many times as you want.

  2. Raymond Hill wrote on

    Just to be sure… When you say “version number”, does this also include the trailing “b0”, “rc1” that we can add for the development versions?

    Will version number “1.6.4” (release) be seen as the same version number “1.6.4.b0” (dev build)?

    I ask because a number of users of my add-on have been complaining of hash key failure for the release versions, yet I did not re-upload the same version more than once, but I did upload different beta/rc versions prior to the final release.

    1. Andrew Williamson wrote on

      Yes, trailing version numbers/letters are included so 1.6.4.b1 is different than 1.6.4b2 or 1.6.4. “version string” is probably a more accurate description than version number. Any version number/string that would be unique according to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Toolkit_version_format will be treated as different versions.