1352416 - Provide a way for Flatpaks to use /app dir for system extensions

Status: NEW

Description

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Currently we hardcode the system extension location on Linux:

http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp#463

Flatpaks do not have access to this directory.

From the Flatpak folks:

Well, I've hit hardcoded path problem. The /usr/share/mozilla/extensions path cannot be changed:
http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/xre/nsXREDirProvider.cpp#465
Flatpak does not allow to write to /usr/whatever during install, only to /app/usr/whatever (ie. using prefix).
So we can't put langpack.xpi to the location from where it could be loaded.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

What is flatpak and why should it support system extensions?

Comment 2

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Flatpak is a new packaging format for application distribution on Linux:

http://flatpak.org/

We are looking at the possiblity of creating an official Firefox flatpak.

Currently the various Linux distros ship multilocale Firefox (not fully supported, but good enough for what they are doing). They do that by shipping the various langpacks.

They would like to bundle the langpacks as part of the Flatpak, but to do that it would have to look for the langpacks inside of the Flatpak bundle, not in the operating system.