1613141 - Remove extensions.webextensions.remote pref, at least on desktop

Status: ASSIGNED

(WebExtensions :: General, task, P3)

Description

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Out-of-process WebExtensions are enabled by default on desktop:

• on Windows since Firefox 56 (bug 1357486)
• on macOS since Firefox 61 (bug 1385403)
• on Linux since Firefox 63 (bug 1357487)

On Windows, we don't run any tests with in-process extensions since Firefox 61 (bug 1447517).
On Linux and macOS, we only run a few mochitests with in- and out-of-process extensions.

Since in-process extensions are not really supported any more, we should just remove the ability to disable out-of-process extensions on desktop.

On Android, out-of-process extensions are not supported yet (bug 1535365), so will continue to run some xpcshell tests on Android (mochitests should continue to run, but sadly the vast majority of them have been disabled during the Fennec->GeckoView migration).

Comment 1

[TheRave]

I use this pref since Bug 1560178 - disallow unsafe loads in the parent for one of my toolbar experiments to run extension content in the parent process. Otherwise the browser.setAttribute "src" can not load the html file anymore. This experiment is based at https://github.com/mixedpuppy/web-ext-toolbar.

Comment 2

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

The pref will be going away, it's just a matter of time. Setting the remote attribute on the browser is possibly the solution for you, but that experiment is very old, so I'm not certain if there are other issues.