It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.
Draft for Packaging Mozilla Extensions
This is a draft for packaging extensions for Mozilla applications: Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, and others.
Naming
Packages of Mozilla extensions should take into account the upstream name of the extension. All Mozilla extensions MUST follow the scheme of mozilla-<extension>, where <extension> is the name of the extension. Examples include mozilla-adblockplus, mozilla-noscript.
Rationale:
Installation Directories
Packages for Mozilla extensions should place unpacked files in %{_datadir}/mozilla/extensions/common/<extension>/ directory, where <extension> is the name of the package without the mozilla- prefix. Packages that contain architecture specific files should instead use %{_libdir}/mozilla/extensions/<extension>/ directory.
To register an extension for a Mozilla application, the package should drop into the application's extension directory symlinks which point to the actual files in the %{_datadir}/mozilla/extensions/common/<extension>/ directory.
For an example, to register the extension for Mozilla and Thunderbird, the package should:
# Firefox
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_firefox_extdir}
ln -s %{_moz_ext_commondir}/{extension_name} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_firefox_extdir}/{extension_id}
# Thunderbird
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_thunderbird_extdir}
ln -s %{_moz_ext_commondir}/{extension_name} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_thunderbird_extdir}/{extension_id}
Rationale:
Directory Ownership
Mozilla extension packages should Require mozilla-filesystem for common directories, but avoid depending on specific Mozilla applications. Each of the %{_<appname>_extdir} directory where the extension package drops symlinks in, should also be owned by the same extension package.
XXX: What to do with %{_mozilla_common_extdir}? Is mozilla-filesystem going to own it or should the extension packages own it?
Sample %files section:
%files
%{_mozilla_common_extdir}/%{name}/
%{_firefox_extdir}/
%{_seamonkey_extdir}/
%{_thunderbird_extdir}/
Rationale:
RPM needs to keep track of the installed directories, so that it could remove them on uninstall. When installing extensions, we drop symlinks to multiple application directories and want to avoid depending on these apps just to satisfy directory ownership requirements. Because of that, Mozilla extension packages need to own all the %{_<appname>_extdir} directories they drop symlinks in, so rpm could track these directories and remove them when the extension package is uninstalled.
Macros
| Macro | Usage |
|---|---|
| _moz_ext_commondir | Directory where extension packages should install actual files. |
| _chatzilla_extdir | Chatzilla extension directory for dropping symlinks in |
| _firefox_extdir | Firefox extension directory for dropping symlinks in |
| _seamonkey_extdir | Seamonkey extension directory for dropping symlinks in |
| _spicebird_extdir | Spicebird extension directory for dropping symlinks in |
| _sunbird_extdir | Sunbird extension directory for dropping symlinks in |
| _thunderbird_extdir | Thunderbird extension directory for dropping symlinks in |