ABP 1.2 listed as version 99.9 in Control Panel

[Gingerbread Man]

Environment

Me: Windows XP SP3 • Internet Explorer 8
Others: Windows 7 x64 SP1 • Internet Explorer 11

How to reproduce

1. Install Adblock Plus 1.2.

Observed behavior

The version listed in Control Panel is 99.9.

Expected behavior

The version listed in Control Panel should be either 1.2 or 1.2.0.0 (which is what's listed in IE's add-ons manager).

Forum thread

​https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24506

[Gingerbread Man]

abpie_999.png

[philll]

According to a user mass-deploying ABP, there is also this fault, which sounds very similar:
"With the new 1.2 version the product information in Group Policy states - Version: 99.9 Language: Arabic (Saudi Arabia)." taken from ​https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=17465&p=104616#p104616

[Gingerbread Man]

Replying to philll:

there is also this fault, which sounds very similar […]

Also see ticket #1235 and ticket #1236.

[fhd]

The review is about allowing downgrades from the installer - I doubt this is going to suffice. There's also the updater actually comparing the versions.

How I see it, I'm afraid we need to do this on top:

1. Publish ABP version 99.10 with that actual version number and just the installer change for allowing downgrades.
2. Make changes on the update server to show a different update.json to users running 99.9 and 99.10 respectively. 99.9 users should get upgraded to 99.10. For 99.10 users we should show a bogus version number (e.g. 100), which in reality would be 1.2.1, or something.

Wladimir - do you see any better way?

[oleksandr]

Installer version and plugin version are (unfortunately) different things. While our previous build did show a 99.9 version in Add/Remove programs (installer), it is actually using the 1.2 version for plugin. So communications with our updater are not broken, and it this wouldn't influence that part.

[fhd]

Ah, phew :) Let's please fix the thing where we need to manually pass the version to createsolutions.bat, there has to be a better way.

[fhd]

Oleksandr uploaded a patch that makes build_release.py properly pass the version to the installer's createsolution.bat.

[eric@adblockplus.org]

Allowing downgrades as such isn't particularly problematic for the present release. However, it opens up a possible support problem. See this discussion from the WiX mailing list about problems with downgrades.

​http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/AllowDowngrades-quot-yes-quot-warning-LGHT1076-ICE61-td7585146.html

The trouble is going to be post-1.3 versions. The installer for 1.3 will be able to downgrade 1.4 and future releases as well. There's a way (with Windows Installer condition statements) of restricting downgrades to major version 99, alleviating problems with people manually downgrading in the future. I doubt this is will be a problem in practice. Rather than trying to write and test this code, I'd recommend instead simply document what happened.

A public disclosure should contain these elements, to ensure people can understand what happened and what to do next.
1) The installer version was defective for 1.2 by declaring a bad product version to Windows Installer.
2) Release 1.3 allows downgrades in version numbers, even if it's an upgrade over 1.2 in every other way.
3) This also means, however, that 1.3 can be installed over future releases. Please don't do that.
3) But if someone does do that, the solution is to uninstall Adblock Plus and to reinstall the current version.