600374 - Add a "low-level documentation" section to the developer guide in the sdk docs

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 614339

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

There's a number of sections in the developer guide that are really low-level and only of interest to either traditional XUL developers or people implementing low-level APIs that require chrome privileges: "Using the SDK with XUL extensions", "LLJAPI Best Practices", "XPI Generation", and "Chrome Authority / Manifest Generation" are a few.

These could end up confusing newcomers and we may want to just file them under a separate section, perhaps even calling it the "Internals Guide" as opposed to "Developers Guide". It could be hidden by default, and clicking the "more..." link at the bottom of the left sidebar could also show it (along with showing the low-level packages, which is what clicking on that link currently does).

Thoughts?

Comment 1

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

> Thoughts?

I think this is a good idea. It looks to me as if the section in XPI on "The program ID" ought to be in the developer's guide though, or at least some simplified version of it. There is a little bit in "Programs" on program ID but it would benefit from being expanded on a bit.

What do you think about the "Security Roadmap" section? I would also put it under the "Internals Guide". Instead I'd have a short section somewhere in the Developer Guide that:

- talks about high and low level modules
- briefly explains what the difference is in terms of privilege
- says that the modules in addon-kit that are covered in the Dev Guide are high level (unprivileged)
- points at the Internals Guide for more information about developing with low-level modules.

Eventually the Internals Guide itself should be sorted out and organized, but for the time being we should just get it off the front page and concentrate on organizing the Developer Guide.

Comment 2

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

The Add-on SDK is no longer a Mozilla Labs experiment and has become a big enough project to warrant its own Bugzilla product, so the "Add-on SDK" product has been created for it, and I am moving its bugs to that product.

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