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

[Mike Hommey]

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?
> 
> > 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.

It refers to the uuid of the application, not 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)?

For the moment, /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/common refers to nothing,
but whenever it gets implemented, any extension in the directory would
be considered by any xulrunner application. And depending on the content
of their respective install.rdf (<em:targetApplication/> sections), they
would be considered or not.

I'd say putting the extensions there now would be future-proof and the
best thing to do IMHO. Then we could put links in
/usr/share/iceweasel/extensions of
/usr/share/mozilla/extensions/{app-id}. I'd be more in favour of the
latter, especially considering the app-id is in install.rdf, and we
don't need to keep a list of app-id <-> locations mappings.

Mike