Importing settings from different versions can cause extension to enter an erroneous state

[aurtzy]

Hi, I recently encountered a strange issue with some of my popup services not showing up.

This issue seems to be caused by the recent removal of services which resulted in some now-invalid popup service entries in my export file to be improperly imported, and wouldn't be fixed until I manually edited it to remove those invalid entries.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Export the default settings.
2. Modify the exported file to include an invalid popup service somewhere in the middle of the "popupServices" list (to make issue obvious; still a problem if it's at the end). This simulates a previously-valid-but-now-invalid service being included as a popup.
3. Import this modified settings file.
4. Expect the exported default popup services to still be displayed, but be greeted with only a subset of them shown - more specifically, only the ones above the invalid popup in the list are shown.

In the state produced by these steps, the Show in popup toggle only works for removing popups - trying to enable a popup does nothing. Additionally, the initial invalid list of popups remain the same on exports. Even if a popup is disabled, it will be exported in whatever state it was initially imported in, so having an invalid popup service in the list basically makes it unchangeable without manual editing if one utilizes exports.

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I will say, I actually hadn't known about some of these services until LibRedirect added them (surprisingly helpful way to discover these sorts of projects!), and I've found myself utilizing them a fair bit. It's a shame I understand they were probably out of scope for this project.

Cheers, big enjoyer of LibRedirect.

[ManeraKai]

I will say, I actually hadn't known about some of these services until LibRedirect added them (surprisingly helpful way to discover these sorts of projects!), and I've found myself utilizing them a fair bit. It's a shame I understand they were probably out of scope for this project.

Some of them will come back, but others like librespeed and myip won't.

There's no mechanism for importing older versions of an exported settings. The conversion of old settings only happens for the internal settings when you update the extension. So if you want things to look right, you should first import the settings in an older version, then update the extension. I made it like this because, the storage structure changes a lot, and we don't have a proper way of converting far apart versions. So we only convert the most previous version, and internally too.

[aurtzy]

The conversion of old settings only happens for the internal settings when you update the extension. So if you want things to look right, you should first import the settings in an older version, then update the extension.

Ah, I see. I often take fairly long periods of time between exporting settings and importing them, so I'm not usually aware of the exported settings version and extension version before I import.

I made it like this because, the storage structure changes a lot, and we don't have a proper way of converting far apart versions. So we only convert the most previous version, and internally too.

Would it be logical to ignore unrecognized entries or use defaults for missing ones? That would at least fix settings becoming (and staying) corrupt, although it wouldn't fix the broader problem of converting restructurized settings. Converting from the previous version for imports in addition to internal conversions might also be something to consider.

Perhaps I'll just have to keep conscious of it and adjust my syncing workflow.

[ManeraKai]

Using defaults for missing or invalid ones is the more logical solution. Because version conversion will be really complicated. Rename the title of this issue if you can.