Firefox browser

There are two ways to work on extensions in Firefox.

The quick way is to load the extension temporarely for the duration of the current session. This has to be repeated every time Firefox is started, all data from the previous session is lost.

A persistent installation is better suited for the development work of QFeeds. The steps for that are:

Firefox Developer Edition

To be able to work with unsigned extension we need Firefox Developer Edition

  • Download: mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

  • Untar into a local folder:

    mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cd ~/.local/bin
tar -xvf ~/Downloads/firefox-60.0b3.tar.bz2

  • Start from that folder, this will also create the profile upon first start

    cd ~/.local/bin/firefox
./firefox

  • Enable usigned extensions

    • Enter URL about:config
    • search for xpinstall.signatures.required
    • Toggle it to false

  • Exit Firefox

  • Find the profile folder

    $ cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/
$ find . -name \*dev-edition\*
./l062qyl2.dev-edition-default

$ cd l062qyl2.dev-edition-default/extensions/

  • Create a pointer file here, it should look like this:

    $ cat \{2df366ca-28d2-11e8-9c70-b7b0d99bd061\}
/home/peterm/work/qfeeds/firefox-qfeeds/

    Important considerations

    Use full path to home folder, not ~

    • The name of the pointer file matches the field id from manifest.json

    • The trailing slash is important

    • This pointer file is a left-over technique from the time of the now deprecated XUL-format extensions. It is described here: Setting up extension development environment (mozilla.org), see section "Firefox extension proxy file"

  • Activate the extension from page about:addons. Toggle the enable/disable switch-box button for extension QFeeds.

  • Once the setup of devel version is done Firefox Developer Edition can be started conveniently with:

    $ (cd ~/.local/bin/firefox; ./firefox&)

  • To reload the extension after edits, Ctrl+R

  • To reload the extension after edits of manifest.json, restart Firefox Developer Edition

  • To be able to navigate the source files while in the Debugger set the option Enable browser and add-on debugging toolboxes to ON. Restart the browser.

Debug background.js

  • Navigate to the debugger via about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, click button Inspect for QFeeds -- this is the only way to debug backgrund.js

  • Use the log filter, to isolate the messages type background

  • To activate edits of background.js, go to about:addons and disable and enable the extension while the debugger window is closed