1161616 - Update XPCOM and add-on documentation for the deprecation of XPCOM binaries

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Developer Documentation Graveyard :: Mozilla Platform, defect, P5)

Description

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

:: Developer Documentation Request

      Request Type: Correction
     Gecko Version: unspecified
 Technical Contact: [e-mail]

:: Details

Support for XPCOM binaries being used in add-ons will be removed in Firefox 40. We need to update documentation as appropriate. This will include (but won't necessarily be limited to):

* Archiving articles specifically about XPCOM binaries in add-ons
* Marking sections of other articles that mention this capability as obsolete.
* Ensuring that the documentation for js-ctypes (including samples) is thorough and up-to-date.
* Ensuring that the documentation and samples for the add-on SDK's child_process is up-to-date.
* Possibly adding information about using Emscripten to build optimized JavaScript for add-ons, if time allows and if this is a logical thing to suggest.

We need to coordinate with the AMO, Firefox development, and tech evangelism teams to try to make this transition as smooth as possible while minimizing as much as we can the impact to the content team's existing Q2 plan.

I will be sending out some emails today about this to begin collecting some needed facts; I'll follow up here once I have those answers.

Comment 1

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

Adding dev-doc-needed keyword here. This bug was filed a while back, not sure if this documentation is still needed or already in place.

Comment 2

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

(In reply to Ritu Kothari (:ritu) from comment #1)
> Adding dev-doc-needed keyword here. This bug was filed a while back, not
> sure if this documentation is still needed or already in place.

Removing dev-doc-needed; it's unnecessary on bugs filed against the documentation (it would just cause the bug to show up in our meetings twice, making it confusing to track).

This is a somewhat ongoing project; it's happening, but slowly, since a lot of this documentation is stuff we don't have anyone actively working on. That makes this update a bit of a spare-time job, even though it's important. That said, I think the most important parts will be done in a reasonable amount of time.

Comment 3

[BMO Automation]

MDN Web Docs' bug reporting has now moved to GitHub. From now on, please file content bugs at https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/ and platform bugs at https://github.com/mdn/kuma/issues/.