[Pkg-mozext-maintainers] Draft Mozilla extension packaging policy

[Alexander Sack]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 05:51:11PM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> On 06/29/2009 04:41 PM, Mike Hommey wrote:
> > I don't really like the xul-ext- prefix for the packages name, but I
> > must say I'm not very satisfied with mozilla- either. At least, that's
> > what is currently used in the archive.
> 
> I think all the choices proposed so far have been fairly uninspiring but
> xul-ext- has been the least bad package name prefix.  I'd be happy to
> hear other suggestions.    Would you prefer to have mozilla- be the
> standard prefix instead of xul-ext- ?
> 
> > Speaking of the archive, I see no package using
> > /usr/share/xul-extensions already, but some do use
> > /usr/share/mozilla-extensions (but they are all mine) and have done for
> > a very long time.
> 
> Do you feel that a filesystem switch to standardize on
> /usr/share/xul-extensions would be harmful?  would you prefer that we
> standardize on /usr/share/mozilla-extensions instead?

I think we should use a consistent naming; also I prefer xul-ext- more
than mozilla-, so using xul-ext- and xul-extensions would be ok from
my pov.´


> 
> > Note that upstream supports
> > /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/{application-uuid}/ directories, and there
> > may be /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/common supported at some time in
> > the future, out of the box.
> 
> Hrm, not sure what this means exactly.  i assume that {application-uuid}
> refers to the application itself, and not the uuid of the extension.
> What would /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/common refer to?  Is it an
> extension that's expected to work with every single XUL-based app?  Do
> these defaults hold for non-mozilla xulapps (like conkeror or songbird)?

"toolkit at mozilla.org" is a special targetApplication that you can use
for extensions that only extend the "toolkit" part of xulrunner
applications. So imo, "common" would be "toolkit at mozilla.org"
already. If that doesnt work, we should fix that.

IMO, we should not block on the current upstream locations. If we say
its better to put stuff in /usr/share/xul-extensions/{app-uuid}, then
lets tell that upstream. For me the "mozilla" path always felt like
legacy locations that were only added because nobody could agree on
something better.

 - Alexander