Closed Bug 1361459 Opened 9 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Native messaging app manifest reading errors on "allowed_origins" and comments

Categories

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P5)

Product:
WebExtensions
Component:
General
Version:
55 Branch
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED INACTIVE

People

(Reporter: johnp, Unassigned)

Details

(Whiteboard: triaged)

An app manifest for native messaging used in Chrome can't be used in Firefox without removing the "allowed_origins" property. The browser console shows the following error: Unexpected property "allowed_origins" NativeMessaging.jsm:118 This complicates add-on development unnecessarily, as the add-on author now has to keep two copies of the file. (one for firefox alone and another one for all other browsers) Also, parsing an app manifest doesn't support comments in the form `//`, as do all other browsers. Add-ons I've come across that put a license header in there will have to remove it just for Firefox.
Given that you already have to put the manifest in a different location for Firefox and include Firefox extension ids (as opposed to chrome ids), this doesn't seem like a big burden.
Priority: -- → P5
Whiteboard: triaged
Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → INACTIVE
Product: Toolkit → WebExtensions
Having just wasted about an hour trying to get firefox to do native messaging with an adapted chrome messaging manifest, I would say it would have been quite nice if this ticket had been prioritized higher. I got no useful error message from the extension console as opposed to OP. It doesn't seem a logical explanation that there might be too many properties in the json. Surely such would simply be ignored - right? :) The reason given above that the file has to exist in two places anyway doesn't really hold for Windows only messaging extensions - here you only need to have two separate registry keys - which can point at the same file.. if it wasn't for this issue. I would happily settle for a hint in the documentation if fixing the issue is too much trouble.
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