Gemal's Psyched Blog - Comments on Important extension checkins

By FP

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 10:12:40 +0100

I hope someone with permissions can update the packaging guide with this information:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/extensions/packaging/extensions.html

As well as the new stuff from Bug 295247, Bug 295265 and Bug 281988.

By jens.b

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 10:37:09 +0100

FP, I plan to add information on the patches I wrote ( and the platform specific components) to http://developer-test.mozilla.org . The packaging docs are being migrated to there, as well.

Note that the final syntax will look more like WINNT_x86-msvc, i.e. includes the processor type. This is required for Linux especially, but also when there will be Macs based on x86 and PPC architecture.

By jens.b

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 10:42:21 +0100

make that:

( and the platform specific components)

By Benjamin Smedberg

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 14:31:21 +0100

Please note that the platform-specific extension subdirectories don't work yet, because I haven't checked in the TARGET_XPCOM_ABI patch yet.

Also note that the searchplugins/ subdirectory doesn't work yet, as the final patch in the bug is not yet reviewed.

By Gerv

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 09:17:10 +0100

"If your extension only works on Windows you can now have this in your install.rdf file"

I'm not sure I like that idea. Who's going to remember to include FreeBSD or Darwin in their list?

Why not a list of OSes where it's known _not_ to work?

By Gerv

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 09:30:34 +0100

...then again, if it's about ABI compatibility, maybe a whitelist is better. I guess I don't know enough about this technically, but what if an OS has e.g. a Linux ABI compatibility layer? Or does that only apply at the whole-application level rather than the plugin level?

By il Fastidio

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 15:23:46 +0100

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By jens.b

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 16:28:02 +0100

Gerv: this is indeed targeted at ABI compatibility, plus at extensions that use things like the Windows registry. Mozilla doesn't take into account any ABI compatibility layers; if an OS has one by default, extension authors could just include that OS, too. This stuff is clearly optimized for the common cases, and is still a huge improvement over the current situation.

For regular XUL/JS extensions: I don't think authors will restrict their extensions to Windows just because they develop and test on Windows. Well, and even if they do, it's only a matter of changing/removing one line in the install.rdf to fix it - I think the average linux user (who is more tech-savvy than the average win user) should be able to manage that, and can then tell the author to include his OS in the list.