[Project_owners] Can't get update to work

[Onno Ekker]

Matthew Wilson wrote:
> Onno Ekker wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Matthew Wilson 
>> <matthew at mjwilson.demon.co.uk <mailto:matthew at mjwilson.demon.co.uk>> wrote:
>>
>>     Onno Ekker wrote:
>>      > Hi,
>>      >
>>      > I thought I understood how Thunderbird checks for updates, but it
>>      > doesn't work for my extension, so I must do something wrong. I've
>>     looked
>>      > over it a couple of times, removed all the signing stuff,
>>     rereleased and
>>      > reinstalled original version, waited for mirrors to sync, etc, but it
>>      > still doesn't work.
>>      >
>>      > This is what I have done:
>>      > - forward-0.1-tb.xpi contains an install.rdf with updateurl
>>      > http://downloads.mozdev.org/forward/update.rdf
>>      > - update.rdf contains information for version 0.2, with updatelink
>>      > http://downloads.mozdev.org/forward/forward-0.2-tb.xpi
>>      > - forward-0.2-tb.xpi is the new version
>>      >
>>      > Do I misunderstand the way Thunderbird looks for updates, or
>>     doesn one
>>      > of the files contain wrong information?
>>
>>     If I try to load your RDF in Firefox, I get Page Info showing that the
>>     content type is "application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml". This won't work I
>>     think; text/xml or text/rdf would be OK; I wouldn't be surprised if
>>     application/rdf+xml worked too now.
>>
>>     Matthew
>>
>>
>> I think the "application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml" content-type gets added by 
>> Firefox because of the file extension or the way files as served. If I 
>> rename it to update.txt, Firefox displays its content type as plain/text.
>>     
>
> No, the server is deducing the content type based on the file extension. 
> Firefox isn't changing it.
>
> I tried to load the update.rdf a couple more times, and got different 
> content types back each time. So I don't think you can rely on it 
> working. Normally these update.rdfs are in the www directory of a mozdev 
> project, not in downloads. I would recommend that you change yours to do 
> this.
>
>   
I've changed the update.rdf, but it's still in the same location, and 
now it does work...
>> Anyway, your comment sent me on the right track.
>> I rewrite the update.rdf, and changed my local extensions.rdf to point 
>> to file:///... and it works with the new content. Seems I or McCoy 
>> changed the format to something that wasn't supported.
>> And most of the docs are for Firefox and Thunderbird is lagging?
>>
>> That leaves one question unanswered:
>> Can someone please tell me how I can debug/monitor the update process? 
>> That is, on Windows, with a normal Thunderbird build? At the moment it's 
>> a blackbox. I can't see what URL's it is checking and what it does with 
>> the returned information...
>>     
>
> In Firefox, you can set the preference extensions.logging.enabled to 
> true; or, if the worst comes to the worst, directly edit 
> nsExtensionManager.js in the components directory. I assume these both 
> work in Thunderbird.
>
>   
Indeed, setting extensions.logging.enabled to true works and shows all 
datasources and RDFItemUpdatres on the Error Console. I should have 
known this setting, while I was still trying to get it working! Thanks 
for the tip!

Onno