XPI infrastructure needs some love

Lapo Luchini lapo at lapo.it
Tue Sep 7 20:47:47 UTC 2010


Doug Barton wrote:
> This might be a good time to re-evaluate how we handle those ports in
> the first place. How many of them involve actual C or C++ code that
> needs to be compiled to run, vs. simply re-packaging javascript bits?

Only enigmail comes to my mind. (but it is even a bit more evil, it
requires the original sources and can't be directly installed)

> For those that we are simply
> repackaging, what's the value in doing that, vs. simply allowing
> users to download them from mozilla's site?

Well, in vastly multi-user places there might of course be good reasons
to have a single centralized package instead of
one-for-each-user-account, but OTOH... places like that are not much
more used in this a-few-PCs-per-household world we currently live in.

Still, I feel that as a *somewhat cleaner* choice and go to the extent
of creating a port for every extension I do use (on my single-user
machines), but I'm not quite sure I'd be able to justify that with real
arguments other than a warm fuzzy feeling. ;)

-- 
Lapo Luchini - http://lapo.it/

"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then
the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
(Weinberg's Second Law)


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