Add-ons/SDK

Status: DRAFT

This is a draft document outlining the current status of the SDK. Its plans and goals for the immediate future. We are looking for feedback on this document from the community.

Current Status

(As of February 2016)

• SDK will continue to be supported through the transition to WebExtensions
• It is not anticipated that features will be added, as work is being focused on WebExtensions
• Mozilla employees will continue to fix high priority bugs such as:
  • security fixes
  • e10s fixes
  • serious stability problems that affect the browser
• The project will remain open to volunteers and we will hold a regular meeting and triage to keep it open

Tasks

Monthly community meeting

Calendar invite: http://bit.ly/sdk-planning-meeting

When: the second Tuesday of every month at 10am Pacific.

Regular monthly public meeting to discuss the current status of the Add-on SDK.

• discuss proposed status https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/SDK

And to triage through outstanding pull requests and bugs including:

• http://bit.ly/sdk-open-bugs
• https://github.com/mozilla/addon-sdk/pulls
• https://github.com/mozilla-jetpack/jpm/pulls
• https://github.com/mozilla-jetpack/jpm/issues

Minutes and other notes can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D3T6ELiVN9uPhsob_2ORsAkYcvNWcqfN-RbuJ6oG0VI/edit#

Where: The add-ons room in Vidyo? Access here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons#Meetings

Initial Bug triage

• Triage through all the existing bugs in bugzilla to apply the above criteria
• Bugs that don’t meet the above criteria get closed with a reference back to this doc
• Currently the SDK is on github but patches need to land in mozilla-central. Clarify this somewhere and link it in the bugs.

Stabilize

• Get jpm tests passing
• Get SDK tests passing with e10s
  • There is a tracking bug on this.
• Pull request triage through the pull requests on github to see what we
  • Can move to a bug in mozilla central.
  • Can close.
• See who is available to help
  • [Module ownership]
  • [Contribute docs]
• Clean up documentation to reflect this eg: [Jetpack|Jetpack]

Future

Your input is welcome and appreciated on how to move forward with the SDK.

• There are features in the SDK that will need to start to be deprecated as we move towards e10s, the deprecation of access to XPCOM and XUL, and so on. We will need to build a suitable deprecation plan.
• How can we help move people towards WebExtensions?
  • Have WebExtensions be callable from the SDK?
  • Have the SDK be callable from WebExtensions?
    • Make a wrapper for WebExtensions in the SDK and then throw a deprecation warning each time its called.
  • Specific documentation on how we’d do that.