270336 - Automatically test extensions to make sure they don't use hacks

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, enhancement)

Description

[Yuan Qi]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Perhaps we should implement some kind of auto testing mechanism for extensions
to make sure they don't use hacks (ie. they should only use the extension API).
If they do, the extension will be rejected and will be banned from future
releases of firefox until the author makes the necessary changes (ie. Things
like TBE should be banned)

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Wolf [:wolf]]

humm, the Mozilla Extension API itself is massive. I seriously doubt there's an
easy or even a possible way to implement something like this. (Though if
somebody can think of a way to do it, and it's reliable. I'm for it.)

(This is likely to be one of those forever future or wontfix bugs. heh)

Comment 2

[Dorando]

IMHO this bug is INVALID.

The only "extension API" there is, is the Extension Manager File Structure
Format ( http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=73423 ) and UMO already
rejects extensions failing there. Beside that, everything else is shared by the
Application and Extensions.

Also your definition of "hack" seems bogus as "var a = 1;" is not an API call,
and a hack could include an API call. However you would define a "hack", you
should be aware that there are many hacks in the core (see most
http://lxr.mozilla.org/aviarybranch/search?string=hack and various
http://lxr.mozilla.org/aviarybranch/search?string=XXX ), ChatZilla! ( for
example
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsblame.cgi?file=mozilla/extensions/irc/xul/content/static.js&rev=1.117#1170
), Calendar ( for example
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsblame.cgi?file=mozilla/calendar/resources/content/unifinder.js&rev=1.89#84
), and in many other extensions.

If you want to reject something, you should do so because it doesn't work or
causes problems, and never because it uses a "hack".