1305143 - Support installTemporaryAddon via remote debugger on Android

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect, P3)

Description

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

Let's support the installTemporaryAddon() remote debugger actor method on Android.

Current implementation: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/devtools/server/actors/addons.js#19

This function probably doesn't work on Android (yet) because it won't have access to the file path. There is a similar actor function that uploads an actual file; I think we need something like this. PackageUploadJSONActor: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/devtools/server/actors/webapps.js#132

If installTemporaryAddon is supported on Android then `web-ext run` can use this to remotely install an add-on: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/web-ext_command_reference#web-ext_run

Comment 1

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

Also, does reload() work on Android? https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/devtools/server/actors/addon.js#172

I think it should work. If not, please file a bug to implement that on Android too.

Comment 2

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

The web-ext tracker for this is: https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/issues/737

Comment 3

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

Hi Kumar,
I've added a prototype of "web-ext run" Firefox for Android support in https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/pull/868 and it looks like that we can be able to install a temporary addon on Firefox for Android without the need to upload the addon archive in-band on the Remote Debugging connection.

The proposed alternative approach from the above pull request uploads the build add-on archive to the android device/emulator using ADB, which is also needed to detect when the Firefox debugging socket is ready on the android system and to configure the needed ADB port forwarding to reach it from the developer machine (e.g. the laptop/desktop computer connected to the device using ADB).

If we decide that the approach proposed in https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/pull/868 is good enough for our goals and needs, then we can then choose to close this as WONTFIX.

Let me know what you think.

Comment 4

[Kumar McMillan [:kumar]]

Yeah! I think this approach works fine. I am glad that I was wrong about needing a Firefox patch to support this case.