Extension/Theme Development Environment

Talk about add-ons and extension development.
Sailfish
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Extension/Theme Development Environment

Post by Sailfish »

With today's Aviary build it seems that the previous method for referencing one's extension/theme development files has been deprecated. Specifically, a developer could simply add a statement similar to the following to their installation chrome folder installed-chrome.txt file:

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skin,install,url,file:///C:/.../MyLatestKewlThings/KewlTheme/

where the KewlTheme directory contained the theme contents.rdf file.

This capability was extremely useful and productive since it didn't require a developer to create new jar files to test every change.

Is there another way to set up a similar development environment for the Aviary branch?
Last edited by Sailfish on June 9th, 2004, 9:25 am, edited 4 times in total.
Sailfish
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Post by Sailfish »

Extension development solution found here.

I've got my fingers crossed that Pike can do the same for Theme Manager...
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lid2000
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Post by lid2000 »

Surely there has to be a way though that doesn't require an additional extension?
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BenBasson
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Post by BenBasson »

No, the API changed, that's why everyone is expected to repackage. The additional extension is to ease the transition, not to stay long term.
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Pike
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Post by Pike »

Using installed-chrome.txt still WFM on:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040603 Firefox/0.8.0+
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lid2000
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Post by lid2000 »

Really? Mine aren't showing up at all (I'm using that same build too)...
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Pike
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Post by Pike »

lid2000 wrote:Really? Mine aren't showing up at all (I'm using that same build too)...

I should have been more precise, I meant extensions still install and run via installed-chrome.txt though they don't show up anywhere (that shouldn't cause a problem in developing them as far as I can see). I don't know about themes.
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lid2000
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Post by lid2000 »

I mean they're not showing up at all, like in overlays or accessing them directly via chrome:// or anything.
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Pike
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Post by Pike »

I just double-checked by manually installing an e-mail checker extension that I haven't worked on or installed for about 8 months and it worked fine (and there's no chance it was already installed or anything like that), so I have no idea why installed-chrome.txt is still working for me but not others.
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lid2000
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Post by lid2000 »

Hrm...

Would you be able to paste the contents.rdf file here? Maybe mine are broken but Mozilla hasn't complained till now (desperately grasping here).
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Pike
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Post by Pike »

lid2000 wrote:Would you be able to paste the contents.rdf file here? Maybe mine are broken but Mozilla hasn't complained till now (desperately grasping here).

[URL removed - no longer available]
Last edited by Pike on November 12th, 2004, 11:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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lid2000
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Post by lid2000 »

Gah, its more or less identical. I'm completely out of ideas.
velcrospud
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Post by velcrospud »

I was able to make my "new-style" extension editable by extracting its .jar file in

Code: Select all

...\Firefox\Profiles\default\extensions\{GUIid}\chrome

then removing all the "!jar" and ".jar!" from

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...\Firefox\Profiles\default\chrome\chrome.rdf

(3 sets of them for the content, locale, and skin)

using June 3 official winxp
Sailfish
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Post by Sailfish »

velcrospud wrote:I was able to make my "new-style" extension editable by extracting its .jar file in
<snip code>

Thanks velcrospud, I know some (many?) will find that a perfect solution.

In my case, I prefer to have my development libraries dislocated entirely from the application files. That way, if the application files gets "horked" (as development environments are known to do), I'm somewhat more assured that my development environment won't get "horked" along with it...
Sailfish
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Post by Sailfish »

Pike wrote:I just double-checked by manually installing an e-mail checker extension that I haven't worked on or installed for about 8 months and it worked fine (and there's no chance it was already installed or anything like that), so I have no idea why installed-chrome.txt is still working for me but not others.

Wild! Perhaps its a platform issue? I'm on Win98SE. Better still, here's my UA:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040603 Firefox/0.8.0+
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