1321494 - API request for read/write access to about:config

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Laurent]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Build ID: 20161129173726

Steps to reproduce:

My extension currently can't be ported to WebExtensions. This extension uses about:config to customize security/privacy/display options (network.dns.disablePrefetch, signon.autofillForms, geo.enabled, and 30 others). I provide buttons to enable/disable them on the fly.



Actual results:

I read in the FAQ (https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Will_I_have_access_to_about:config_or_the_preferences.3F) that you plan to implement APIs for each feature, instead of providing an access to about:config.

However, with the planned removal of old extensions (https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/11/23/add-ons-in-2017/), I'm quite sure that by the end of 2017, all specific security/privacy/display APIs I need won't be implemented.




Expected results:

So, with the announcement of old extensions removal, do you plan to change your ideas, and provide an API to access to about:config?
Otherwise, customization extensions will directly go to the trash with Firefox version 57.

If anyone (me) spends time implementing an about:config API with WE Experiments (https://webextensions-experiments.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html), will it be merged in Firefox Stable?
Otherwise, if we already know this about:config API will be rejected, there is no need to spend time developing it.

Thank you.

Comment 1

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

As you've already read in the FAQ, this is something that we don't plan to support.