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<p>Seems I slightly misread this, but perhaps my misconception could
be an idea:</p>
<p>Play store has a Firefox for Android Beta. Perhaps extensions
should do the same, i.e. the Foobar extension should have a
separate FoobarBeta extension that is targeting the beta channel
users? <br>
</p>
<p> -Magnus<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 29-10-2018 12:04, Axel Grude wrote:<br>
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<p>Dear Geoff,</p>
<p>please don't confuse ESR60 with Thunderbird beta. (tb63) -
the ESR (thunderbird 60.*) supports using install.rdf - so you
can keep using that unless you want to support beta versions.
<br>
</p>
<p>For testing beta versions I would suggest creating a separate
batch script for buildng. I haven't managed to get mine fully
compatible yet but it should be definitely possible to start
from the same sources without being forced to "fork" code at
this stage - let the batch script do the rest. You will need
to build 2 different versions but you can use minver &
maxver to control the behavior on ATN. Nothing stops you from
releasing both versions alternately - they should be picked up
by the update mechanism based on minver / maxver.</p>
<p>As regards having a separate beta trail, I think this would
be the best option (we had this on AMO but I think it was
removed again). Is this something that ATN could reintroduce?<br>
</p>
<p>Axel<br>
</p>
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<div id="mySignature"> <b class="myName"><a
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<div id="newHeaderAG1" style="font-size: x-small;
padding:1em;
 background-color:rgba(220,220,240,0.4);
border-radius:3px;"> <b>Subject:</b>Extension development
for beta<br>
<b>From:</b>Geoff Lankow <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:geoff@thunderbird.net" moz-do-not-send="true">geoff@thunderbird.net</a><br>
<b>To:</b><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org"
moz-do-not-send="true"><tb-planning@mozilla.org></a>
<br>
<b>Sent: </b>Monday, 10/29/2018 08:37 GMT ST +0000 [Week
44]<br>
</div>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:76a9de72-c407-8f8a-efd4-f961659a8f52@thunderbird.net"
id="mid_76a9de72_c407_8f8a_efd4_f961659a8f52_thunderbird_net"
class=" cite">
<p>We have a problem. Actually, a series of problems.</p>
<p>Firstly. For an extension to run on ESR60, it must be:</p>
<ol type="A">
<li>an overlay extension with an install.rdf manifest, or</li>
<li>a bootstrapped extension with an install.rdf manifest, or<br>
</li>
<li>a WebExtension with a manifest.json</li>
</ol>
<p>C is very rare, because ESR60 supports so few of the
WebExtension APIs. B isn't an issue yet but will become one
soon, so I'm ignoring it for this conversation.</p>
<p>For A to run on beta, it must have a manifest.json and <i>NOT</i>
have an install.rdf manifest. (At this point it's technically
a WebExtension and we're just lying to the extensions back-end
about what it's actually doing.)</p>
<p>This leads to the second problem: it's impossible to have an
extension that both has an install.rdf and doesn't have an
install.rdf. Therefore an extension developer cannot make an
extension that can run on both ESR60 and beta.</p>
<p>(Side note: I've been trying to make a backport for ESR that
can run an updated legacy extension, but I'm uncomfortable
with the size of the changes.)</p>
<p>The extension developer <i>could</i> make a separate version
of their extension which is only for beta. Given the other big
changes in the platform, that's probably the best option
anyway, but that takes us to problem three: they can't host
the beta version of their extension on ATN, because ATN no
longer has support for development channel extensions. I <i>think</i>
there's an ugly workaround involving uploading versions
out-of-order such that the ESR version is the one displayed,
but I really don't think developers should have to deal with
that, or would bother. They could also self-host the extension
but I think most wouldn't want to do that.</p>
<p>We're left with a bunch of not-very-nice options, as well as
all the other issues facing extension developers, which I
think is just going to put a lot of developers off altogether,
and we'll lose a large fraction of our extensions.</p>
<p>GL<br>
</p>
<br>
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