[Pkg-mozext-maintainers] Packaging WebExtensions

[Sebastian Noack]

Hi everyone,

as you might know, Firefox is moving away from traditional Gecko
extensions, towards WebExtensions which are essentially the same as
Chrome extensions.

WebExtensions don't need an install.rdf manifest. In fact the
documentation indicates that is has been deprecated as part of legacy
extensions [1]. Still, I would have to create an install.rdf, just so
that I can use install-xpi.

However, it is much simpler, and probably not any less appropriate
than relying on deprecated mechanisms, to simple use debian/install
and debian/links files, in order to achieve the same result, as I did
here [2].

But I wonder whether this is the way how Firefox extensions are
supposed to be packaged in the future. Otherwise, mozilla-devscripts
would have to be updated, in order to support WebExtensions properly,
unless I miss something.

Also I wonder whether it still makes sense to package Firefox and
Chromium extensions separately, if the the only difference is either a
symlink in /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/ or a script with one line in
/etc/chromium.d.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Install_Manifests
[2]: https://github.com/snoack/mypass/tree/master/debian