Add pre-configurable/hidden preference to add additional subscriptions

[sebastian]

Background

Some organizations that deploy Adblock Plus for Chrome using group policies need a way to add additional filter subscriptions.

We already support a preference that can be pre-configured by group policies in order to ​suppress the first run page. The same mechanism can be used to allow central configuration of additional filter subscriptions.

What to change

• Support another pre-configurable preference with the name additional_subscriptions and the type array of string. That preference will contain a list of URLs of filter subscriptions, which can be configured by group policy.
• When Adblock Plus is loaded, subscriptions given by that preference should be automatically added.
• It should not be possible to remove those subscriptions on the options page, since they would be automatically added again.
• However, the user should still be able to disable them. When disabled those subscriptions should NOT be automatically enabled again.

[abpbot]

A commit referencing this issue has landed:
​https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockpluschrome/rev/a5c02038c610

[sebastian]

On Linux, for example, adding a file with following contents under /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/adblockplus.json will cause EasyPrivacy to be added as additional subscription:

{
  "3rdparty": {
    "extensions": {
      "ldcecbkkoecffmfljeihcmifjjdoepkn": {
        "additional_subscriptions": [
          "https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

On Windows, according to my understanding of ​Chromium's incomplete documentation, you would have to set following group policy to achieve the same:

[HKLM\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome\3rdparty\extensions\ldcecbkkoecffmfljeihcmifjjdoepkn\policy\additional_subscriptions]
"1" = "https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt"

Also note that the extension IDs in the snippets above refer to the Adblock Plus development build.

[Ross]

The Linux version works but I have not got the Windows version to work yet in a VM. Have tried various root keys (HKLM, HKLU) and methods. Will try an actual Windows machine.

ABP 1.11.1606
Chrome 31, 45 / Windows 7
Chrome 49 / Ubuntu 14.04

[sebastian]

For Windows this needs to be configured via Active Directory. For more details please refer to the documentation linked above. Frankly, I never tried it out myself on Windows, since it's not trivial to set it up.

[DavidPeacock]

spam

[zindara]

spam

[tomberrot]

spam

[jessicabelorr]

spam

[tonnyken]

spam

[MollyB]

spam

[amdin]

spam

[AlexGambler]

spam

[mage17]

spam

[zerathomaz]

spam

[jessicabelorr]

spam

[vinabiz]

spam