1352962 - How to develop WebExtensions for mobile (Firefox for Android, Fennec)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Developer Documentation Graveyard :: Add-ons, enhancement)

Description

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

I looked in the following places, but could not find any information about how a WebExtension add-on can be loaded in Firefox (Android) for development. Currently I have to upload the add-on to AMO and then install the XPI.

Is this the preferred way? Regardless, the workflow for development of WebExtensions for Android should be documented (note: about:debugging is unavailable on mobile).

- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Firefox_for_Android
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Tutorials/Mobile_development (note: this is one of the top results in Google for queries related to WebExtensions and mobile)

Comment 1

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

We are working on adding "Firefox for Android" support to the web-ext CLI command as part of the following pull request:

- https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/pull/868

The currently supported workflows are (until the above PR is not yet merged and released into web-ext):

- generating a signed XPI using the AMO developer API keys (e.g. generated using "web-ext sign"), pushing the XPI to the device and installing it by loading the "file://sdcard/" url in a tab and clicking on the signed xpi file link

- or using an Firefox apk from a non-release channel (e.g. a Nightly build), disabling the xpi signature checks and installing an unsigned XPI (e.g. generated using "web-ext build")

The support that we are going to include into the web-ext CLI command will greatly simplify the process by installing the XPI as a temporarily installed addon (which doesn't require the signature to be disabled and so it will work on both release and non-release builds) and it is going to support the auto-reload on source changes as currently supported for the "Firefox Desktop" target.

Comment 2

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

FYI: My complete workflow is:

1. web-ext sign to create XPI.
2. Publish xpi to a site accessible by my phone (an intranet IP via a local server, could be anything really).
3. Tap on the xpi link in Firefox mobile.
4. Confirm download, confirm installation.

5. Use WebIDE to debug any issues.

web-ext run support sounds great. Development is not just the ability to load applications though, but also the ability to debug it. I hope that the documentation will also include a tutorial to debug issues (e.g. via WebIDE).

Comment 3

[BMO Automation]

MDN Web Docs' bug reporting has now moved to GitHub. From now on, please file content bugs at https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/ and platform bugs at https://github.com/mdn/kuma/issues/.