1201944 - concerns regarding legacy extension development in FF 41 / F42

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(WebExtensions :: General, defect)

Description

[u130342]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0
Build ID: 20150826023504

Steps to reproduce:

I realized that extension development is going worse with upcoming version.
I have a personal extension which I don't plan to push on AMO and which is modified very frequently.
I've found documentation that extension (legacy) development requires the use of the developer or nightly version, that introduces a number of concerns to me:

1. security and stability
I'm forced to use the developer version (formerly known as aurora) version, which might be instable or insecure.

2. performance
I don't want to use the aurora version because it has that many debugging, tracing enabled that it could be to slow.

3. compatibility (this indeed is a general problem)
The developer edition might have features enabled or removed or implemented in a way that is NOT compatible to releases. Therefore NO way would exist to develop addins that require a specific behaviour of a specific feature.




Expected results:

I would be fine with any of these solutions:
- set the pref xpinstall.signatures.required  that unsigned extensions are allowed as it was introduced in FF41
- whitelist my extension in a special pref setting by it's id.
- getting a developer version BUT based on the release or beta version.
- requiring a special extension/plugin that must be installed in order to allow unsigned extension, or if the opt-in would appear once per such a plugin.
- Mark my sync-profile as allow unsigned extensions (in release/beta)

But, I'm really disappointed if I have to use a unstable browser for my extension, although I understand the intention.

Comment 1

[Strauss]

Hi, Harald.

I've been following the discussions on extension-signing and there will be unbranded versions of Firefox where this option is available (I think it will just be called Browser). This should address the issues listed above.
[testday-20150904]

Comment 2

[Strauss]

(In reply to Strauss from comment #1)
I meant to state that the unbranded versions will be the same as Release and Beta, but only with branding removed. So Firefox 41 would be Browser 41 with the Firefox branding added (and extension-signing enforced).

Comment 3

[u130342]

(In reply to Strauss from comment #2)
> (In reply to Strauss from comment #1)
> I meant to state that the unbranded versions will be the same as Release and
> Beta, but only with branding removed. So Firefox 41 would be Browser 41 with
> the Firefox branding added (and extension-signing enforced).

That should be fine for me, thx.

Hope https://wiki.mozilla.org/Addons/Extension_Signing will be updated to put the download location there, otherwise it could be difficult to download because a search for "Browser" would result in too many results ;)

Comment 4

[u130342]

Tried to find it .. but ..
Where do get the unbranded firefox version?

Comment 5

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

(In reply to Harald from comment #4)
> Tried to find it .. but ..
> Where do get the unbranded firefox version?

It's not available yet. This isn't really a bug report. I suggest you post in the forum instead: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/add-ons