Re: [w3c/manifest] Add a unique identifier for a PWA (#586)

@dmurph wrote:
> I guess, in the case where a website accidentally assumes they can just reference a different manifest link for an update, and that doesn't obviously break anything at first, is still an issue. We have already had partners make this mistake with start_url on desktop and they can't fix it (half of their population installed after the change, half before the change. So they have two separate apps now they have to maintain and people get confused because they can install both, etc).

I can see why the segmentation problem exists when the identifier of an app is a tuple of manifest URL + start_url + something else (this is not something a developer would intuitively expect). But if the identifier was the manifest URL alone then is there any evidence to suggest that developers _do_ assume different manifest URLs will be treated as the same app by user agents?

The reason that I ask is that the cost of fixing this (potentially hypothetical) problem by adding an additional identifier is that updates could become a lot more complex. It's much simpler to fetch a fixed manifest URL to look for updates than to have to figure out what document belongs to the app (bearing in mind start_url and scope can change), parse the manifest link relation from that document's HTML and then fetch the manifest.

I suggest the underlying problem here is just that the specification currently doesn't specify what the identifier of an app is or how apps are updated so developers are left to guess what user agents use to identify their app and each user agent may do something different.

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