Summit2008/Sessions/Proposals/Add-on Manager/Session Notes

These are some notes from Mossop's Add-ons Management session:

• Add-on Locale Packs
  • AMO should allow you to add a new localization without requiring a new version and process
  • Testing is an issue, esp. with l10n
  • Allow locale packs to be "auto updates"
  • What are the restrictions for the locale packs?
  • Should we allow locale packs to be downloaded from non-AMO sites?
  • How do we handle updates to add-ons which don't have a locale pack available. (See add-on dependency stuff).
  • Possibly offer fallbacks - not good for chrome systems (DTD can't do it but property files can).
• Dependency resolution
  • First request - show the dependency
  • Automatic dependency resolution (trying to eliminate multiple restarts)
  • AMO should reflect add-on dependencies
  • AMO sees the dependency at the system level and dynamic generation of AMO (AMO may need to see what is already installed). Client might ignore it.
• Conflict Resolution
  • Everyone will start blocking a list of a series of extensions
  • Without it, it incentivizes add-ons authors to disable other authors
• Install without Restart
  • Perhaps close and restart a window?
  • Remember that you need to support more than the Firefox app (these apps don't have session restore as a saving grace)
  • Encourage folks to use dynamic overlays
  • Perhaps allow sandboxing of add-ons based on what they do. Create widgets or limited capability add-ons.
  • Flipping a flag that allows add-on authors to claim "Needs a restart" might have detrimental effects
  • Allow profile version management (to allow testing of add-ons) similar to Vista/XP's snapshot/restore (and Firefox's bookmarks restore), etc...
• Install/Uninstall Hooks
  • Allow a callback per extension
  • uninstall.rdf
  • Notifications are too confusing and unreliable
  • Allow it to work even in safe mode

• Replace RDF
  • XML-based format potentially
  • We can validate the XML
  • Lots of good developer tools out there already
  • Not much harder to work with XML
  • Do we support reading the old RDFs? Yes
  • Do we need to support reading the old update.rdf? Yes

• UI Changes
  • Can you write extensions that modify your add-ons tab