WICG / WICG/install-element

Should we require `manifestid`?

Open
#6 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
HTML
Stars
21
Forks
4
Avg merge
3d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
4

Description

Copy/pasting from @LiaHiscock's comments in https://github.com/WICG/install-element/pull/4#discussion_r2561692967:

"""
Re. the manifestid requirement, that doc looks a bit out of date. Let me try to clarify. Manifest id is an app's unique identifier, and how we determine if an app is already installed, should be updated, etc. Unfortunately, id is not a required manifest field, so only about 4% of apps declare one. For the other 96% of apps, we "compute" an id using the start_url field, see starbucks.com's 'application' tab.

starbucks.com's 'application' tab, showing a generated ID.

However, this opens the door for security issues, because if the developer changes their start_url, their site will appear to the browser as a completely new app that can be installed (multiple apps-foot-gun situation mentioned in Dan's doc), and existing installs under the former start_url become orphaned.

Dan was a big proponent of the id requirement for the API. IIRC our goal there was that the 2 parameter signature helps with backwards compatibility for existing apps without ids, and ideally the 1 parameter signature usage will grow as more apps adopt ids.
"""

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the quoted discussion in pull request #4 and the manifest-id and start_url behavior described here. Determine whether the install API should require manifestid and document the compatibility and orphaned-install consequences; done means the project has a clear, agreed requirement.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
html
Domain
api, web-dev
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.