Update extension without installing .xpi files

[kunigami]

Hi there,

I'm developing an extension for Firefox and every time I make changes
to the project I have to pack it within .xpi and then install. I
thought that editing the files directly in .mozila/firefox/... would
do the tricky, but not all updates are taking place this way (even
after I restart Firefox).

Is there a simpler way to do that?

Thank you,

[Eric Jung]

Yes, please see:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Setting_up_extension_development_environment#Firefox_extension_proxy_file

Eric

[Li Hong]

Hi Kunigami,

Yes there is. Read this article:

https://developer.mozilla.org/index.php?title=En/Firefox_addons_developer_guide/Let%27s_build_a_Firefox_extension

The paragraph may answer your question is quoted below:

"Operations check

Perform an operations check to make sure that your changes to the source
file are correct. At this point, it’s important that you disabled the XUL
cache as discussed in the earlier section, “Setting up your development
environment”. Assuming you’ve done that, you’ll be able to confirm the
changes to overlay.xul and clock.xul without the bother of relaunching
Firefox or reinstalling the extension. If the browser.xul file, which is the
target of the overlay in overlay.xul is being read in again, the changes
will be reflected, and you’ll be able to see the changes by opening a new
browser window. The files clock.xul and clock.js will be read in every time
you open the clock window, so just re-opening the clock window once will
suffice to check them. During development, it’s important to minimize the
number of steps between revising a source file and running an operations
check against those changes. The part “Operations checks on revised source
files” discusses the general procedure to follow from source-file revision
to operations check."

For XUL related debugging, ie changing position/color of vbox or onclick
event etc, What works for me well is to:
1)launch DOM Inspector and inspect chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
since I am developing a toolbar plugin that needs overlay with browser.xul

2) use DOM Inspector to identify the XUL element you want to debug. Check
it's properties to see if it's what you are expecting.

3) use any text editor or IDE to open the XUL or JS file directly from your
FF extension installation folder (so you have to install your plugin first)
and make any code change you want. Then just reload the browser.xul in DOM
Inspector.

This is how I do dev without using XPI.

Additionally, you may find it useful to use Extension Developer's JS Shell
to double confirm the property or method you want to use does exist for the
selected element. It is the only tool I can found that will do
auto-complete.

Li Hong

From: kunigami <kuni...@gmail.com>
To: dev-ext...@lists.mozilla.org
Subject: Update extension without installing .xpi files
Message-ID:
<a26c8505-4b9b-482f...@f6g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi there,

I'm developing an extension for Firefox and every time I make changes
to the project I have to pack it within .xpi and then install. I
thought that editing the files directly in .mozila/firefox/... would
do the tricky, but not all updates are taking place this way (even
after I restart Firefox).

Is there a simpler way to do that?

Thank you,