Bug 485624 made Firefox abort update downloads if the update is an older version than the currently installed app. It relies on the version specified in update.xml being a genuine application version, which means we can no longer abuse that to put human-friendly strings there like "Firefox 3.5 RC 1 (build 1)". We also can't use "3.5rcN" to distinguish between release candidates, more details in bug 496917 comment 12. Firefox 3.5b4 and later contain bug 485624, as will Firefox 3.0.12.

When bug 496917 is fixed on the branches (it already is on trunk) you will be able to put a human readable application version into the xml that Firefox will display. It must go in the name attribute: <update name="Firefox 3.5 RC 1" version="3.5" extensionVersion="3.5" .... This should give you back most of what you had before. Only downside is that it requires you to include the application name which may present localisation difficulties.

Thanks for the clarification Dave.

Works for the 3.5b99 to 3.5rc1 build1 bump but needs more testing.

Comment on attachment 383236 [details] [diff] [review] WIP I'm doing some testing and whatever fixing needs to be done so we can start 3.5rc1build2 soon.

Just for fun, now the follow-up patch in bug 496917 is landed on trunk, and once the branch version of it in bug 485624 is landed you can actually start using the appVersion field again exactly as you were.

Comment on attachment 383236 [details] [diff] [review] WIP This patch worked OK in a 3.5b99 -> 3.5rc1build2 testrun, too. We'll still have to manually edit the snippets to set extv=3.5rc1, but appv was set properly.

Comment on attachment 383236 [details] [diff] [review] WIP changeset: 296:414dcfad8e36

This worked fine for 3.5rc1build2