Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus development builds for Firefox moved to new location · 2018-03-24 16:30 by Sebastian Noack

Mozilla is going to drop support for beta versions from AMO, which means we’ll need to go back to distributing the development builds of Adblock Plus for Firefox ourselves. Furthermore, Mozilla will force existing beta users to be automatically updated to the stable version. So if you want to keep using the development build of Adblock Plus for Firefox you’ll need to re-install it from it’s new location.

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but hope to keep people interested in testing our development builds and give us feedback in order to ensure the quality of Adblock Plus.

This situation is frustrating. For reference, not too long ago, we had to move our development builds to AMO, since Firefox 43 and above would no longer load extensions that haven’t been signed by Mozilla. Just later AMO allowed unlisted extensions to be signed for self-distribution. Finally they are now requiring us to migrate again to that distribution mechanism, without even providing a way to properly migrate our development build users!

Tags: adblock plus

Comment [7]

Guest · 2018-03-25 11:51 · #

How do I install it from the new location? Firefox says it prevented the website to install an unsigned extension when I try to installt it. Switching “xpinstall.signatures.required” to “false” doesn’t help. I’m on Firefox 60 Beta 6.

Reply from Sebastian Noack:

Thanks for reporting. Indeed, the direct link doesn’t work yet. We will fix that. ~~In the meanwhile, you can install the latest development builds from here~~.

Edit: Fixed. You should always get a signed build now.
Arnoh · 2018-04-12 06:20 · #

I updated from 3.0.2(?).1983beta to 3.0.3.2011 and suddenly had two entries in my addons menu and 2 adblock icons show up. Clicking either of the icons led me to the same old settings, so I thought I’d delete 1983beta and be done with it.

However after restarting Firefox all my settings are now back to default, so how do I get it back to like it was before?

The patterns.ini and patterns-backup5.ini is still available with all the stuff I whitelisted and subscriptions listed in there, but the new 3.0.3.2011 doesn’t seem to read it.
Also it doesn’t modify it in case I add new whitelisted sites or add a completely different subscription never used before – so where does it even store those settings?!
Arnoh · 2018-04-12 06:30 · #

Ok seems it doesn’t use patterns.ini any longer, instead it creates storage.js which doesn’t have any backups and the old one was just deleted along when I removed the outdated Adblock development version – seems like I’m fucked.
Reply from Sebastian Noack:

The previous development builds hosted in the beta section on AMO, and the development builds installed from the new location on our servers, are technically independent extensions, which could be installed separately and won’t share any data.

In order to backup the internal data, go to about:debugging and run following code from the debug console for the old extension:
```
browser.storage.local.get(null).then(data => { console.log(JSON.stringify(data)); });
```
Copy the output, debug the new extension, restore the data with following code (replace the ellipsis with the copied data), and restart Firefox afterwards:
```
browser.storage.local.set(...);
```
However, if you have already uninstalled the extension, this is no longer possible, since data of WebExtensions are deleted on uninstall.

Sorry for the inconvenience. As outlined in the announcement above, we are frustrated that Mozilla, after forcing us to move our development builds to AMO, is now forcing us to move them away from AMO without a way to properly migrate our users.
Arnoh · 2018-04-13 00:20 · #

Thank you for the explanation, yeah unfortunately it’s gone already.

Oh well, time to re-setup and get rid of some outdated filters in the process.
Arnoh · 2018-04-23 17:32 · #

#2029 got the same issue the guest above had, error comes up with “Firefox has prevented this site from installing an unverified add-on.” or directly from the add-on page “There was an error downloading Adblock Plus development build.” when checking for updates.
EP · 2018-04-24 18:45 · #

same problem as Arnoh. I cannot install new ABP dev builds onto Firefox 59.0.2 like build 2029 and comes up with that error message. the last dev build that worked was #2002.
EP · 2018-04-24 18:54 · #

ok – minor correction to my last comment. I got #2028 to install on Firefox 59.0.2 but not #2029. looks like the problem occurs with only build 2029.

Reply from Sebastian Noack:

There was a hiccup with our infrastructure, where a race condition caused unsigned builds to be published again (see issue 6611). The next development build should be signed again. If you are already on a previous build installed from the new location, you should be automatically updated as soon as a new build is available.

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