819427 - Allow removal of add-ons installed from system locations

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 640775

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

I just spent quite a while helping a user. He had two add-ons reporting themselves as installed, even after uninstalling Firefox and deleting his profile, with no button to remove them.

Of course, some installer put them there -- at least one of the add-ons is listed on AMO, so it's legit -- but that doesn't help our poor user figure out how to get rid of them.

I don't think that <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Installing_extensions#Disabling_install_locations> is a decent user-facing tip for how to prevent them from ending up in a profile.

A user will not make the intuitive leap that there are some files in ~/Library/Application Support/Mozilla, and that he has to delete those files (and apparently edit extensions.sqlite) to get them to go away.

Can we morph and fix Bug 566608 to provide some education, and perhaps if the add-on is installed in ~, allow them to remove it anyway (this bug)?

It is my firm belief that users should not have to open Finder or know about our add-on install paths to manage their add-ons.