Repacking for Firefox 22

[Will Bamberg]

Rocketeers!

If you have an add-on built with a version of the SDK earlier than 1.14,
then it won't work with Firefox 22 (currently Firefox Aurora, and due to
release on June 25).

For it to work, it will need to be repacked with SDK 1.14.

There are three reasons for this:

* the SDK, in versions 1.12 and earlier, expects the platform's old
private-browsing APIs to exist and will fail to load add-ons if they
don't. This applies not only to add-ons that use private-browsing, but
to all add-ons. Until Firefox 22 a stub for these APIs is in place,
which is convincing enough for the SDK to work, unless add-ons actually
try to use prvate-browsing. In Firefox 22 the stub is removed.

* the __exposedProps__ change
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=854558) will break
everything earlier than 1.9

* add-ons that are built with 1.14 will automatically use the modules in
Firefox if they are running on Firefox 21 or higher. So once you are on
1.14, your add-on will automatically get newer versions of the SDK code
without having to repack. Of course, this doesn't mean we'll never break
compatibility again: things happen sometimes, and we have to change
APIs. But updates to add-ons to make them use a newer version of the SDK
code should not be needed any more.

We're working on a plan to repack as many add-ons as we can, and will
let you know as soon as we can whether we can repack your add-on for you
or not.

Will

[Dennis Baldwin]

Will,

Very timely email! We actually have a handful of users on FF 22 and I discovered last night about the private-browsing API issue. Glad to hear there's a potential repack in the works.

Thanks,

Dennis

Will

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[Will Bamberg]

On 13-04-25 11:01 AM, Dennis Baldwin wrote:

Will,

Very timely email! We actually have a handful of users on FF 22 and I discovered last night about the private-browsing API issue. Glad to hear there's a potential repack in the works.

Yeah, this will become a bigger issue when 22 moves into Beta as well. There's nothing stopping you repacking with 1.14 yourself now, of course!

Cheers

Will

Thanks,

Dennis

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Will Bamberg <wbam...@mozilla.com> wrote:

Rocketeers!

If you have an add-on built with a version of the SDK earlier than 1.14, then it won't work with Firefox 22 (currently Firefox Aurora, and due to release on June 25).

For it to work, it will need to be repacked with SDK 1.14.

There are three reasons for this:

* the SDK, in versions 1.12 and earlier, expects the platform's old private-browsing APIs to exist and will fail to load add-ons if they don't. This applies not only to add-ons that use private-browsing, but to all add-ons. Until Firefox 22 a stub for these APIs is in place, which is convincing enough for the SDK to work, unless add-ons actually try to use prvate-browsing. In Firefox 22 the stub is removed.

* the __exposedProps__ change (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=854558) will break everything earlier than 1.9

* add-ons that are built with 1.14 will automatically use the modules in Firefox if they are running on Firefox 21 or higher. So once you are on 1.14, your add-on will automatically get newer versions of the SDK code without having to repack. Of course, this doesn't mean we'll never break compatibility again: things happen sometimes, and we have to change APIs. But updates to add-ons to make them use a newer version of the SDK code should not be needed any more.

We're working on a plan to repack as many add-ons as we can, and will let you know as soon as we can whether we can repack your add-on for you or not.

Will

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[db]

Hi Will,

I was wondering how we go about getting our add-on repacked. Is there a repack planned soon? We have a significant # of users on Firefox 22 now and our add-on is incompatible. I'd like to request a repack if possible. Or do we need to submit a new version manually?

Thank you,

Dennis

[Jeff Griffiths]

That depends - we've tried to re-pack as many existing extensions as
possible and are in the midst of sending emails to the authors
notifying them of how that went. Have you gotten a notification? Which
extension are you referring to specifically?

You can of course re-pack, test and re-submit your extension to AMO
manually. If you're concerned about your users on Firefox 22, this
might be the fastest route. As well, this will allow you the
opportunity to make sure yor code works as expected on Firefox 22.

cheers, Jeff

[Will Bamberg]

Hey Dennis

As Jeff says:
* you can repack and resubmit your add-on to AMO any time
* we're in the process of figuring out which add-ons we can repack, and
will let you know either way

We've already emailed everyone whose add-ons we could not repack, and
we're currently smoke testing the ones we could repack. Once we have
those results we'll email everyone else to let them know whether the
smoke tests passed - I hope this will happen tomorrow.

If we can repack your add-on and the smoke tests passed, we'll let you
know about it before we actually resubmit it, and you'll get the chance
to ask us not to. This is in case you have already submitted an updated
version, or in case you'd rather test and resubmit it yourself.

Cheers

Will