Mozilla to stop supporting XPCOM binary components

[WaltS48]

Get ready for extensions to break if they have binary components.

1159737 – Stop supporting binary XPCOM components except as part of the application

[patrickjdempsey]

Interesting. I suppose it was to be expected. RoboForm users are going to be in a tizzy. Perhaps Mozilla needs to make some efforts to contact known reputable vendors that use this?

[WaltS48]

More info from Jorge.

Dropping support for binary components in extensions | Mozilla Add-ons Blog

I should have probably added this to the original post.

No more binary components in extensions - Google Groups

The only extension I'm concerned about is Lightning.

[rsx11m]

Extension authors that need to use native binaries are encouraged to do
so using the addon SDK “system/child_process” pipe mechanism:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add ... ld_process

If this is not sufficient, JS-ctypes may be an alternative mechanism to
use shared libraries, but this API is much more fragile and it’s easy to
write unsafe code.

Is either of those workarounds a sufficient solution for Lightning?

I would expect that neither of these substantial API changes are straight-forward enough to be performed within the usual release-train time frame. Someone at Mozilla was really thinking this through...

[patrickjdempsey]

They've apparently been discussing it for a year and just forgot to tell the world they were going to do it.

[lithopsian]

They've apparently been discussing it for a year and just forgot to tell the world they were going to do it.

Doesn't affect me directly, but seems typical of the current Mozilla "Oh by the way ..." approach to shafting people. Maybe they researched how many people or addons would be affected, perhaps even contacted developers directly, but somehow I doubt it. I'm just waiting for the day they can't be bothered supporting those pesky fringe nut-jobs on Linux any more.

[WaltS48]

It was a complete surprise to the Thunderbird crew that just integrated Lightning into the next release version.

[patrickjdempsey]

Maybe they researched how many people or addons would be affected, perhaps even contacted developers directly, but somehow I doubt it.

They might have looked on AMO, but the problem is that I would think that MOST of the extensions using this kind of technology are ones installed by external software or by corporations. And I don't think Mozilla has a mechanism for getting reports on the content of extensions to be able to look around in actual installs. I really like how they consider this to be outdated technology... but they still use it. But of course, we've seen that before... Mozilla has a totally different set of rules for their internal code than they do for addons. I doubt half of the Firefox code would pass an Extension or Theme review.

[therube]

There will only be a bug once FF has "fixed" it, IOW, after the fact.
Oh, just kidding .
viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2927975

Telling. Or maybe foreboding.

[rsx11m]

That was filed by Fallen on Friday already, with patch up for review:

• Bug 1165428 - Restore support for binary components in extensions on a per-application basis

would introduce a build-time configuration switch to disable the application-manifest check.

[patrickjdempsey]

Somehow I doubt this will pass. Mozilla has spoken and such efforts to undermine the authority are rarely considered. Especially since this is a change that has an end game invovling completely abandoning XPCOM for extensions and applications in the long run.

[LoudNoise]

On the other hand, it won't be all that surprising if they did it by mistake

[rsx11m]

Bsmedberg claimed that he would review such an attempt, thus let's wait and see...

[rsx11m]

Patch has been approved, yet needs to land. The next step would be (for Lightning/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey at least) to add the build-time switch to their configurations.

Edit: Just landed on mozilla-inbound.

Edit #2: Bug 1166842, Re-enable binary extensions for comm-central.

[patrickjdempsey]

Good news for Lightning users. Also makes SM even more attractive as an alternative (if they can ever get Builds back up!)