1444502 - Remove support for installing unpacked extensions

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

We only support unpacked extensions that are installed for development purposes at this point. The add-on manager code for installing them, and the extra set of tests we run for unpacked extensions, is useless overhead at this point.

Comment 1

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Apparently dictionaries still only work unpacked, so I'm going to restrict this to removing support for the em:unpack attribute, and making dictionaries automatically unpacked.

Comment 2

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Attachment: Bug 1444502: Remove support for installing unpacked extensions.

This retains support for installing unpacked dictionaries, since Hunspell only
supports loading dictionaries from ordinary filesystem paths.

Unpacked extensions are no longer supported on production, except during
development. WebExtensions have no support for the unpacked flag at all, and
specially signed legacy extensions are forbidden from using it, so there's no
point in maintaining support for this install code. Or, more importantly, for
running a nearly complete duplicated set of tests in order to exercise it.

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/226602/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/226602/

Comment 3

[Andrew Swan [:aswan]]

Comment on attachment 8957678 [details]
Bug 1444502: Remove support for installing unpacked extensions.

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/226602/#review232602

Thanks.  xpcshell.ini is kind of disaster right now but cleaning that up can wait for another day.

Comment 4

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/b8b11082ff88a050a88c1c616b7ed6ffcfc60f76
Bug 1444502: Remove support for installing unpacked extensions. r=aswan

Comment 5

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b8b11082ff88

Comment 7

[CosminB]

Is manual testing required on this bug? If yes, please provide some STR and the proper extension(if required) or set the “qe-verify -“ flag.

Thanks!

Comment 8

[sbean]

I would like to point that we need to unpack if you have a binary component in the add-on (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Add-ons/Install_Manifests > see unpack).
In my case, I use ctypes : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/js-ctypes

Since there is no other solution yet (WebExtension does not seem to be ready), unpack attribute is needed

Comment 9

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Binary components and ctypes have not been supported in extensions for years

Comment 10

[sbean]

There were still working in Thunderbird 59, is there a workaround?

Comment 11

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Working and supported are not the same thing. We banned ctypes in extensions as a policy matter when we removed support for binary components. Thunderbird has its own policies, but as far as mozilla-central goes, they're unsupported. If you need a workaround, I can suggest webassembly or Subprocess.jsm. Otherwise, you'll have to ask the Thunderbird team.