Fenix: [Bug] Firefox Nightly Add-on Collection stops updating

[eberhardweber]

Steps to reproduce

After five or so changes and refreshes to my Firefox Nightly add-on collection, manually refreshing the list via the Debug Menu element "Custom Add-on collection" stopped updating the add-on list completely.

The list that is loaded to my Nightly browser is two or three updates behind the one I have made at addons.mozilla.org, and none of the changes are being applied to the browser.

Expected behavior

The add-on list should be able to be refreshed as many times and as often as the user wants.

Actual behavior

The collection stops being refreshed.

The only way I was able to update my add-on collection was making a completely new list with a new ID.

Device information

Android device: Xiaomi Mi A1
Fenix version: Nightly (201205 17:02)

[eberhardweber]

To update on this bug, my second collection has stopped refreshing just after one update.

Edit: Changing between two collections does refresh the add-on list. Refreshing the same collection has issues.

Further edit: Updating the "old" collection to contain new add-ons to update the "new" collection actually returns a far older list of add-ons. None of my lists no longer have this particular composition of add-ons, so some kind of archived/cached list is being pulled instead of an updated one.

[kbrosnan]

I recall that the data is cached and will only update around once a day. @csadilek this is expected behavior?

[csadilek]

@kbrosnan We deactivate the client-side cache in Fenix for users with custom add-on collections to prevent this, but AMO recently started caching on the server-side, which is likely the cause of this. We're discussing next steps later this week, but in the meantime the workaround above is the only option if newly added add-ons need to be available right away.

[diox]

Yes, AMO now has a cache on the collection endpoint Fenix is using, with a one hour TTL. It currently applies to all collections. We intend to tweak that cache, possibly drop it entirely for non-mozilla collections to fix this issue. This is tracked in https://github.com/mozilla/addons-server/issues/16151

[pcgeek86]

I can confirm that in Firefox Nightly, collections do not get updated. Please consider adding a mechanism to forcibly refresh the custom add-ons collection in Fenix.

If I add a new extension to a collection on AMO, using the desktop browser, I would like it to appear in Fenix right away, so that I can install it.