Add-on Builder update for SDK 1.4 coming soon!

[Daniel]

Hey add-on devs,

In order to support the latest SDK release it required us to adjust a few of the mechanisms in the Add-on Builder. The two largest pieces that we needed to modify were the Add-on Builder Helper, and the way we construct packages. These changes are being tested now, and you should see the 1.4 version of the SDK appear in the Builder next Wednesday, January 18th.

- Builder Team

[db]

Hi Daniel,

A couple of questions:

1. You mentioned the changes showing up in the Builder on the 18th
(today). Did you mean the 25th?

2. Do you know when a repack of existing SDK based add-ons with SDK
1.4 will happen? Our current add-on uses SDK 1.3 and I'm wondering
when repacks are scheduled to happen. Is there a rule of thumb?

Thanks,
Dennis

[dcm]

Hi Dennis,

We actually don't have to do a repack for the 1.4 release as it was still testing positively on the next release of firefox (as well as the current release of Firefox). We are seeing that what will be the 1.5 release will likely have to be repacked though.

And that's precisely what we look for - are tests passing for the releases of Firefox which we are targeting for that version of the SDK.


Thanks!

Dave

[db]

Hi Dave,

Unfortunately our add-on is a victim of this bug:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla-labs-jetpack/browse_thread/thread/932930bb805d46ff

I've followed the comment history and it appears that even though this may be a bug in FF10 the add-on team decided to work around it in the SDK:

https://github.com/mozilla/addon-sdk/commit/5f28e7fdb77f00d919a47e1aabd9952007c5062d

So we need our add-on repacked or FF10 users are going to notice it's broken and uninstall it. Is there a place where I can request a repack or perhaps you can take care of this?

I've verified that SDK 1.4 resolves this issue. Here is our add-on link for reference:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/priceblink

Please let me know how I should proceed.

Thanks,

Dennis

[David Mason]

Hi Dennis,

By all means then, you should repack your add-on. If its based on Builder then you will need to wait until the Builder team gets 1.4 in place - or you can go ahead and download 1.4 and work on it in a terminal to repack. I'll see if Daniel can't update you on the progress of getting 1.4 on Builder.


Thanks!

Dave


db wrote:

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[db]

Okay. 

We don't use the builder so we'll need to repack and then submit for review. But let me make sure I understand something here. If there are other add-ons that are impacted by this bug then FF10 will be released and knowingly break them? Check out this ticket:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=714110

with several comments such as:

"Tracking for Firefox 10. We don't want to ship something that breaks add-on SDK consumers."

and

"However, the above behavior is thus not a bug, but very much intentional. This is a bit problematic, since we can't just back out the changes introduced by this commit, but leaving them in could break compatibility with existing add-ons."

and

"In my previous comment I said that the behavior we're seeing is intentional, but what is not clear to me is why being able to check the type of an object defined in a script with chrome privileges from a script with content privileges is a security risk. If we are going to end up breaking existing add-ons with this, I would at least like to see a very strong case why we absolutely need to disallow checking the type of an object that is passed into a compartments. Could anybody shed some light on this?"

I just want to make sure the scope of this issue is understood. It seems like this "break" could be avoided if an automatic repack were to happen since I've verified that SDK 1.4 fixes the issue. I realize the Jetpack tests are passing, but doesn't that mean there isn't coverage related to this issue?

We spent a lot of time rewriting our add-on with the SDK and I want to make sure we thoroughly understand the ins and outs of this process.

Thanks.

[dcm]

Hi Dennis,

I think I need to bring you up to date on repacks. At this point we are not running repacks (even when we run them) for all jetpack-based add-ons, only those opted-in and hosted on Builder. Even then, we are taking the most conservative approach we can. What happened, and where we are going were posted on the add-ons blog a while back: https://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/10/04/add-on-sdk-repacks-proposal/

As I said, we are being very conservative about touching add-ons automatically and programatically but do know that we still have plans to adhere to this promise of repacking - its just going to take some time to make sure we get it right. So while I understand your point about this particular issue, we don't want to start running these repacks until we have all technical insurances in place.

I hope that helps explain.

Thanks,

Dave

[Dennis Baldwin]

Dave,

I understand and thanks for the clarification.

Dennis

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[Daniel]

Oh sorry, Dennis (and others) I did mean SDK 1.4 would be available on the 25th - I was suffering from some form of calendar dyslexia :(

As dcm noted, we do not need to repack for 1.4, but 1.5 will require repacks. Being that the bulk of the changes we needed to implement in the Builder to for compatibility with 1.4+ versions of the SDK, the Builder should again be in sync with new SDK version releases. Let me know if you have any further questions.

- Daniel