1252719 - Create WebExtensions using WebIDE

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools Graveyard :: WebIDE, defect, P3)

Description

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

Original proposal by Richard Armuelles:

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/proposal-create-webextensions-with-webide/5572

UI-wise, I can envision how this will work.

Under WebIDE, we replace “New App…” with a menu item that covers both app and add-on, called “New Project…”

Under this option, we have a few templates. One of the templates is called “WebExtension: a WebExtension Add-on template with bare minimum structure”.

Comment 1

[Richard Armuelles]

Hi, is possible to do a exception in firmed add-ons in order to facilitate testing in Firefox?

Comment 2

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

(In reply to Richard Armuelles from comment #1)
> Hi, is possible to do a exception in firmed add-ons in order to facilitate
> testing in Firefox?

Sorry, I don't understand your question.

Comment 3

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

This does seem like a reasonable addition to WebIDE in its current form, and others have asked for similar things in the past, like bug 1141833.

I think, at least for the DevTools team, this work would be low priority, as we aren't actively working on enhancements to WebIDE at the moment.  However, this could be another area (like with about:debugging) that the add-ons team or the community could get involved.

Comment 4

[Richard Armuelles]

Firefox currently requires that each add-on have a signature to install it. This can be disabled in about: config -> xpinstall.signatures.required. If is enabled a way to develop and test webextensions, the lack of a signature would not be an inconvenience?

Comment 5

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

You can temporarily install an unsigned add-on from about:debugging. I'd assume WebIDE would provide the same functionality.

Comment 6

[Andy McKay]

(In reply to Richard Armuelles from comment #4)
> Firefox currently requires that each add-on have a signature to install it.
> This can be disabled in about: config -> xpinstall.signatures.required. If
> is enabled a way to develop and test webextensions, the lack of a signature
> would not be an inconvenience?

You can use the "load temporary add-on" from about:debugging it has lots of cool features that you should check out.

Comment 7

[Andy McKay]

I don't think we should do this right now. For a quick start into WebExtensions, it feels like adding some way of templating or initializing a directory structure could be done in web-ext. Since WebExtensions contain so little boilerplate, I'm not sure how valuable it is, but that is orders of magnitude easier than doing anything in WebIDE. Certainly its not something that I feel is worth the add-ons team time right now.

Coupled with the comment #3, I'm going to close this. If you feel that this is something that should happen, please re-open.

Comment 8

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

Also, the about:debugging page will soon let you install/reload an add-on remotely on Fennec which was probably the main draw for hooking into WebIDE.