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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">geoff@thunderbird.net</a><br>
<b>To:</b><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org"><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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cite="mid:76a9de72-c407-8f8a-efd4-f961659a8f52@thunderbird.net"
id="mid_76a9de72_c407_8f8a_efd4_f961659a8f52_thunderbird_net"
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<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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