FYI: Firefox - No more binary components in extensions

[Martin Stransky]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: No more binary components in extensions
Date: Mon, 4 May 2015 11:03:12 -0400
From: Benjamin Smedberg <benjamin at smedbergs.us>
Reply-To: dev-extensions at lists.mozilla.org
To: dev-platform <dev-platform at lists.mozilla.org>, Firefox Dev 
<firefox-dev at mozilla.org>, dev-extensions at lists.mozilla.org

(Followup questions or comments to mozilla.dev.extensions only, please.)

With the landing of bug 1159737, I have removed support for binary XPCOM
components in extensions. This is planned to ride the Firefox 40 train.

This change is necessary because we no longer expose or intend to expose
a binary-stable API to XPCOM. Most addons have already moved away from
binary XPCOM components, but those that haven't are a source of
instability around Firefox releases.

Extension authors that need to use native binaries are encouraged to do
so using the addon SDK "system/child_process" pipe mechanism:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Low-Level_APIs/system_child_process

If this is not sufficient, JS-ctypes may be an alternative mechanism to
use shared libraries, but this API is much more fragile and it's easy to
write unsafe code.

I will be updating MDN documentation and removing or archiving old
documentation about binary XPCOM components in the next few weeks.

--BDS

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