faster extension development
Mar 21, 2005, 09:27pm EST
When creating a Firefox extension, I normally writes some code for an extension, create a XPI file, installs it in Firefox, restarts Firefox, test the extension, and then repeat the process. It’s like an edit-compile-debug development cycle except there’s extra overhead in creating the XPI and installing it. The 2 second delay in installing an extension can be annoying if you’re writing an extension.
Fortunately, you can cut out a couple steps in the process by creating a
symlink from your profile’s chrome dir to your actual code. For example,
if I’m working in ~/myextension/, I can create a symlink from
~/.mozilla/firefox/hash.profilename/extensions/{[extension
hash]}/chrome → ~/myextension/chrome. Now I can
edit the code and see the changes simply by restarting Firefox.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? There are a couple good tutorials about how to create Firefox extensions.
Numbski at Jun 13, 2005, 08:34pm EDT
I’m just about to get my feet wet in the extension development stuff, but I’m wondering…are you limited language wise? I usually do perl, but I’m considering trying python this first time out since it is the native lanuage for BitTorrent, and the extension I wish to write needs to support that.
I realize that I’m creating a pre-requisite for the extension itself by doing so, presuming that win32 users will have a python interpreter installed (I will inform the user and provide needed links), and on *nix I will need to make the user aware of this, and some package managers may handle it for me.
Just wondering if it can even be done.