184506 - solve "first install" problem for XPT files

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P3)

Description

[Peter Lubczynski]

Currently, XPT files must be located in a known location specified by the
embedding application. With PLIDs specified in the Windows registry, plugin
vendors publish the install location of their plugin and XPT which will likely
not be a known location. This bug is opened to implement a way to scan XPT files
in any location specified by the plugins module via PLID.

The problem is that the XPT scan is done before the plugins module has a chance
to load or scan for plugins and the scan is limited to directories specified by
the embedding application in the directory service provider. The XPT scan does a
compare with the previous scan in order to optimize registration so simply
adding the directories latter would cause a performance hit on each startup.

One idea is to have XPT's AutoRegister incorporate reading a flat file of
directories written to by the plugins module. The contents of the file should
only change if we detect new/removed plugins so we'll only have the performance
hit of opening and reading the file. Embedding vendors desiring to inhibit this
feature could also use a pref disabling the plugins module from writing the file
in the first place.

Comment 1

[rubydoo123]

setting to the branch milestone

Comment 2

[Peter Lubczynski]

--->peterl

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 255910 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Max Spicer]

Setting severity to major as this bug effectively breaks sites that embed the
real player plugin (see bug 255910 for details).  A highly visible example of
this is the BBC radio site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4.shtml?listen).
 The audio is played, but all the control buttons are broken.  This can be fixed
by manually copying the xpt file to the components directory, but that's hardly
a feature that's going to win over new users!  I've also changed the target
milestone - apologies in advance if I'm not meant to do this.

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

XPCOM scripting is no longer supported