amo-validator

addons.mozilla.org Validator

:warning: :warning: :fire: This tool is being deprecated and going away eventually. :warning: :warning: :fire:

It is still used on addons.mozilla.org for legacy add-ons but once support for updates for legacy add-ons goes away from AMO this tool will be archived.

The AMO Validator is a tool designed to scan Mozilla add-on packages for problems such as security vulnerabilities, exploits, spamware and badware, and lots of other gunk. By using a combination of various techniques and detection mechanisms, the validator is capable of being both efficient as well as thorough.

Setup

Prerequisites

You can install everything you need for running and testing with

pip install -r requirements.txt

Submodules

The validator may require some submodules to work. Make sure to run

git clone --recursive git://github.com/mozilla/amo-validator.git

so that you get all of the goodies inside.

Spidermonkey

A working copy of Spidermonkey (debug or non-debug is fine) is required. The easiest way to do this is to just download the binary.

If you want to build it from scratch, clone the mozilla-central repo or download the tip (which is faster). Then build it from source like this

cd mozilla-central
cd js/src
autoconf2.13
./configure
make
sudo cp dist/bin/js /usr/local/bin/js

You must use autoconf at exactly 2.13 or else it won't work. If you're using brew_ on Mac OS X you can get autoconf2.13 with this

brew install autoconf213

If you don't want to put the js executable in your $PATH or you want it in a custom path, you can define it as $SPIDERMONKEY_INSTALLATION in your environment.

Using amo-validator as a contained app using docker

Check this instructions from marceloandrader

Running

Run the validator as follows

./addon-validator <path to xpi> [-t <expected type>] [-o <output type>] [-v]
    [--boring] [--selfhosted] [--determined]

The path to the XPI should point to an XPI file.

-t

The type that you expect your add-on to be detected as. The list of types is listed below.

-o

The type of output to generate. Types are listed below.

-v

Enable verbose mode. Extra information will be displayed in verbose mode, namely notices (informational messages), Jetpack information if available, extra error info (like contexts, file data, etc.), and error descriptions. This only applies to `-o text`.

--selfhosted

Disables messages that are specific to add-ons hosted on AMO.

--boring

Disables colorful shell output.

--determined

Continue validating the remaining tiers of an add-on if one tier has failed. Certain high-tiered tests may inadvertently fail when this option is enabled for badly malformed add-ons.

--target-maxversion

Accepts a JSON string containing an object whose keys are GUIDs and values are version strings. This will override the max version that the add-on supports for the corresponding application GUID. E.g.: `{"{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}": "6.*"}`

--target-minversion

Identical to `--target-maxversion`, except overrides the min version instead of the max.

--for-appversions

Accepts a JSON string containing an object whose keys are GUIDs and values are lists of version strings. If this list is specified, non-inlinecompatibility tests will only be run if they specifically target the applications and veresions in this parameter. E.g.: `{"{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}": ["6.*"]}`

Expected Type:

The expected type should be one of the following values:

any (default)

Accepts any extension

extension

Accepts only extensions

theme

Accepts only themes

dictionary

Accepts only dictionaries

languagepack

Accepts only language packs

search

Accepts only OpenSearch XML files (unpackaged)

multi

Accepts only multi-item XPI packages

Specifying an expected type will throw an error if the validator does not detect that particular type when scanning. All addon type detection mechanisms are used to make this determination.

Output Type:

The output type may be either of the following:

text (default)

Outputs a textual summary of the addo-on analysis. Supports verbose mode.

json

Outputs a JSON snippet representing a full summary of the add-on analysis.

Output

Text Output Mode (default; text)

In text output mode, output is structured in the format of one message per line. The messages are prefixed by their priority level (i.e.: "Warning: This is the message").

At the head of the text output is a block describing what the add-on type was determined to be.

JSON Output Mode (json)

In JSON output mode, output is formatted as a JSON snippet containing all messages. The format for the JSON output is that of the sample document below.

{
    "detected_type": "extension",
    "errors": 2,
    "warnings": 1,
    "notices": 1,
    "success": false,
    "compatibility_summary": {
        "errors": 1,
        "warnings": 0,
        "notices": 0
    },
    "ending_tier": 4,
    "messages": [
        {
            "uid": "123456789",
            "id": ["module", "function", "error"],
            "type": "error",
            "message": "This is the error message text.",
            "description": ["Description of the error message.",
                            "Additional description text"],
            "file": ["chrome/foo.jar", "bar/zap.js"],
            "line": 12,
            "column": 50,
            "context": [
                "   if(foo = bar())",
                "       an_error_is_somewhere_on_this_line.prototy.eval(\"whatever\");",
                null
            ],
            "compatibility_type": "error",
            "for_appversions": {
                "{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}": ["5.0a2", "6.0a1"]
            },
            "tier": 2
        }
    ],
    "metadata": {
        "name": "Best Add-on Evar",
        "version": "9000",
        "guid": "[e-mail]"
    }
}

JSON Notes:

File Hierarchy

When a subpackage exists, an angle bracket will delimit the subpackage name and the message text.

If no applicable file is available (i.e.: when a file is missing), the file value will be empty. If a file value is available within a subpackage, then the file attribute will be a list containing the name of the outermost subpackage's name, followed by each successive concentric subpackage's name, followed by the name of the file that the message was generated in. If no applicable file is available within a subpackage, the file attribute is identical, except the last element of the list in the file attribute is an empty string.

For instance, this tree would generate the following messages:

package_to_test.xpi
    |
    |-install.rdf
    |-chrome.manifest
    |-subpackage.xpi
    |  |
    |  |-subsubpackage.xpi
    |     |
    |     |-chrome.manifest
    |     |-install.rdf
    |
    |-subpackage.jar
       |
       |-install.rdf

[
    {
        "type": "notice",
        "message": "<em:type> not found in install.rdf",
        "description": " ... ",
        "file": "install.rdf",
        "line": 0
    },
    {
        "type": "error",
        "message": "Invalid chrome.manifest subject: override",
        "description": " ... ",
        "file": "chrome.manifest",
        "line": 7
    },
    {
        "type": "error",
        "message": "subpackage.xpi > install.rdf missing from theme",
        "description": " ... ",
        "file": ["subpackage.xpi", ""],
        "line": 0
    },
    {
        "type": "error",
        "message": "subpackage.xpi > subsubpackage.xpi > Invalid chrome.manifest subject: sytle",
        "description": " ... ",
        "file": ["subpackage.xpi", "subsubpackage.xpi", "chrome.manifest"],
        "line": 5
    }
]

Line Numbers and Columns

Line numbers are 1-based. Column numbers are 0-based. This can be confusing from a programmatic standpoint, but makes literal sense. "Line one" would obviously refer to the first line of a file.

Contexts

The context attribute of messages will either be a list or null. Null contexts represent the validator's inability to determine surrounding code. As a list, there will always be three elements. Each element represents a line surrounding the message's location.

The middle element of the context list represents the line of interest. If an element of the context list is null, that line does not exist. For instance, if an error is on the first line of a file, the context might look like:

[
    null,
    "This is the line with the error",
    "This is the second line of the file"
]

The same rule applies for the end of a file and for files with only one line.

Testing

Tests can be run with

py.test tests/

Functional tests, which take longer, can be run with

py.test functional_tests/

Then make a cup of tea while all of those tests run. It takes a while. If you have more than two cores on your machine or you don't mind pwnage, you can try to increase the number of parallel processes used for testing.

Releasing

Follow these steps to release a new version of the amo-validator Python package:

1. Increment the __version__ attribute at the top of ./validator/__init__.py.
2. Commit your change to the master branch and run git push.
3. Tag master with the new version number, such as git tag 1.9.8.
4. Push the new tag with git push --tags
5. TravisCI will build and release a new version of amo-validator to PyPI from your tag commit. Here is an example.

Updating

Some regular maintenance needs to be performed on the validator in order to make sure that the results are accurate.

App Versions

A list of Mozilla <em:targetApplication> values is stored in the validator/app_versions.json file. This must be updated to include the latest application versions. This information can be found on AMO:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pages/appversions/

JS Libraries

Lists of JS library hashes are kept to allow for whitelisting or warning. These must be regenerated with each new library version. To update:

python extras/update_hashes.py

To add new libraries to the mix, edit extras/jslibfetcher.py and add the version number to the appropriate tuple.

Jetpack

In order to maintain Jetpack compatibility, the whitelist hashes need to be regenerated with each successive Jetpack version. To rebuild the hash library, simply run:

cd jetpack
./generate_jp_whitelist.sh

That's it!

Language Packs

With every version of every app that's released, the language pack references need to be updated.

We now have an automated tool to ease this tedious process. It is currently designed to work on OS X with the OS X versions of Mozilla applications, though it could conceivably run on any *NIX platform against the OS X application packages.

To run the tool, first create a new directory: extras/language_controls/

Put the .app packages for each updated product into this directory. Once this is ready, simply run:

cd extras
python update_langpacks.py

That should be it. Note that this tool will fail horribly if any of the teams change the locations that the various language files are stored in.

Also note that this tool should only be run against the en-US versions of these applications.