Support for legacy add-ons to be dropped later this year

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tanstaafl
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Support for legacy add-ons to be dropped later this year

Post by tanstaafl »

It was just announced in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... E8Yw6POxEE that they intend to drop all support for legacy add-ons within the version 72 time frame (by end of this year). Version 68 removed a lot of support for legacy add-ons but it was still possible to use one if it was appropriately modified. "He is talking about dropping support for the "legacy" key in your manifest.json. Which means only true WebExtensions will be supported."

They are planning on integrating Lightning into Thunderbird, rather than have it be a bundled add-on, as part of this effort.

"Dropping support for non-MailExtension add-ons is also needed for addons.thunderbird.net. Supporting old-style add-ons would require a significant investment in the back-end there, since the Django version of the back-end would reach EOL and have to go through a painful and expensive upgrade" seems to imply that legacy add-ons would not be available on thunderbird.net anymore for anybody who choose to stick with an older version of Thunderbird. That seems like a very bad idea, if true. It also sends a terrible message to all of the add-on authors that have been updating their legacy add-ons to keep them working despite all of the changes in the environment.

Ryan Sipes is the community manager. His email address is listed in https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Core_Team
morat
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Joined: February 3rd, 2009, 6:29 pm

Re: Support for legacy add-ons to be dropped later this year

Post by morat »

Is there a list of non-legacy MailExtensions somewhere?

MailExtension API
http://thunderbird-webextensions.readthedocs.io/

Christopher Leidigh uses the IsMailExtension column which includes legacy MailExtensions.

Extension Statistics
http://github.com/cleidigh/ThunderKdB/t ... statistics
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tanstaafl
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Re: Support for legacy add-ons to be dropped later this year

Post by tanstaafl »

Not that I'm aware of. But if besides IsMailExtension being 1 it has a min version of 68 that increases the odds they're non-legacy mailextensions.

I just noticed https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08 ... x-add-ons/ which states:

"As no supported versions of Firefox will be compatible with legacy add-ons after this date, we will start the process of disabling legacy add-on versions on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) in September. On September 6, 2018, submissions for new legacy add-on versions will be disabled. All legacy add-on versions will be disabled in early October, 2018. Once this happens, users will no longer be able to find your extension on AMO"

I guess that helps explains why the Thunderbird developers are dropping legacy add-ons from thunderbird.net. Its a fork of AMO. I don't understand why both groups aren't willing to create a simple archive somewhere or at least a list identifying what legacy add-ons exist and where there might be a support page (such as github, an authors personal web page or mozdev.org).
morat
Posts: 6404
Joined: February 3rd, 2009, 6:29 pm

Re: Support for legacy add-ons to be dropped later this year

Post by morat »

I guess there are only 6 non-legacy non-experiment_apis MailExtensions.

G-Hub Lite
http://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/59195

Google Calendar Plugin
http://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/986420

FileLink Provider for Dropbox
http://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/986436

FileLink Provider for Box
http://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/986635

Night and Day Dynamic
http://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/987651

TaskviewLayout
http://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/987660

I got the list by searching the Thunderbird Addon Code Knowledge Base.

ThunderKdB
http://github.com/cleidigh/ThunderKdB
http://cleidigh.github.io/ThunderKdB/do ... earch.html

95 results with manifest_version
http://github.com/cleidigh/ThunderKdB/s ... ifest.json

85 results with legacy
http://github.com/cleidigh/ThunderKdB/s ... ifest.json

6 results with experiment_apis (4 results without legacy)
http://github.com/cleidigh/ThunderKdB/s ... ifest.json

12 results with permissions (6 results without legacy and without experiment_apis)
http://github.com/cleidigh/ThunderKdB/s ... ifest.json
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