428373 - Provide service for extensions to register extension data to be synced

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Sync, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

Weave should provide a way for an extension to register its data (possibly only in the users profile directory) which would be then be stored in the cloud for use on multiple machines

For example
Adblock filter lists
Grease Monkey Scripts
Stylish user styles

Weave should probably provide an user interface in the settings to select which extensions data is uploaded

Comment 1

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

Leaving this one for a future version (potentially).

Comment 2

[Michael Kraft [:morac]]

This would be very useful for my Session Manager extension as I've had people request the ability to sync sessions between browsers.

Comment 3

[Bridget Almas]

This would be very valuable to extension developers and seems as if it would also help establish Weave as the standard for synchronization of browser profile data. Users would be able to use a single interface to manager all their data synchronization rather than having to learn a separate approach for each extension which provides that feature.

Some specifics on what would be nice to see in this:

- the ability for extensions to register additional data types for sync, and include in their installation packages derivations of Weave's Engine class to tell it how to sync their data (and to overlay Weave preferences with appropriate elements for configuring their data synchronization). Weave does already support data-type specific synchronization engines but I think it would also need to support derivations of the SyncCore class per data type to provide per-data-type conflict resolution strategies.

- enabling the user to specify an alternate server url per data type (or more generally, per extension, applicable to all data types registered for that extension)

- the ability to extend the sharing functionality to have more fine-grained control over how shared data is used (i.e. rather than just syncing the data as-is, allowing the extension to access shared data directly on the server applying its own business logic to determine how to make use of it)

Comment 4

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

These bugs need to be triaged, removing 0.3 milestone setting.

Comment 5

[robesoh]

The way I see it, you're almost there with Collections, and the ability to publish addons from a given computer to collections directly.

What would be really cool is an extension that would automatically install extensions in a Collection to systems have registered with Weave.

Comment 6

[adam]

I'd like to see AddOns synced, but not inline with regular data. Perhaps a weekly or on-demand job. I'd be happy to pay a small annual fee if it meant my /entire/ Firefox browser was kept in sync, as it would save me from having to use MozBackup on a regular basis.

Comment 7

[Drake]

That would be nice to all sorts of useful addons. Like PasswordMaker.
Don't have to save on a USB flash drive OR a FTP server.

Comment 8

[Leho Kraav (:macmaN @lkraav)]

how is this bug doing? has it been replaced by another or what is the current work status on this?

Comment 9

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

This capability already exists, actually.  We'll be making sure docs are published by the end of the year to explain best practices around how to write a Sync engine.