Extension eventually broken on Ubuntu (>= 12.10)

[fat-lobyte]

Hello.

This is the "I give up" notice.

The Ubuntu Firefox Team decided to remove support for binary extensions in favor of the Rapid Release cycle [1].

Since then, they have gradually removed any code from the Ubuntu repositories that could be used to build such extensions.[2][3].

This has culminated in the removal of all the xulrunner development files (except plugin headers) from the firefox-dev package: Compare [4] against [5].

The headers required to build this extension are not present in the quantal version of the firefox packages, and are only present in "thunderbird-dev". I expect that it's only a matter of time until they get removed there too, so I won't hack around by using the tunderbird headers for firefox extensions.

So the only thing to do is to obide the directive [1] and stop using the extension in Ubuntu.

I will do this by not using Ubuntu at all. Cheers.

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2011-May/007088.html [2] https://github.com/infinity0/mozilla-gnome-keyring/issues/10#issuecomment-5408150 [3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1030504 [4] http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/amd64/firefox-dev/filelist [5] http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/amd64/firefox-dev/filelist

ps.: Fuck you, Ubuntu.

[infinity0]

Ouch man that sucks :( I'm not an expert on this issue but it may be more mozilla's fault than ubuntu - upstream does not make xulrunner easy to package as a separate independent component in any meaningful sense.

See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=688438 for another example of this, which means I need to build this extension twice in debian, once against xulrunner-dev and once against icedove-dev.

[swick]

This sucks, indeed. But I got it to compile on ubuntu 12.10 64bit neverthelesst:

  XUL_CFLAGS="-I/usr/include/firefox -I/usr/include/firefox/nspr -I/usr/include/thunderbird" XUL_LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib/firefox -L/usr/lib/thunderbird-devel/sdk/lib/ -lxpcomglue_s -lxul -lxpcom -lmozalloc -lplds4 -lplc4 -lnspr4 -lpthread -ldl" XPCOM_ABI_FLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib/firefox/" make

[fat-lobyte]

@swick Thanks, but it seems that you use the headers from thunderbird-dev. That has the problem that you will build against a different libxul version than firefox uses. Since Thunderbird lags behind a few days, you will quite often build for the wrong version.

Also, I consider building an extension for firefox with thunderbird development files a too ugly hack to base a package upon. There has to be a point where one has to accept that it's just not working.

Note that it is quite likely that the thunderbird-dev package will drop the headers too.

[swick]

With the update to firefox 18 and thunderbird 17 it indeed is not working anymore with this method. I got it running with the xulrunner sdk though (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/releases/18.0/sdk/xulrunner-18.0.en-US.linux-x86_64.sdk.tar.bz2):

XUL_CFLAGS="-I../../xulrunner-sdk/include -I../../xulrunner-sdk/include/nspr" XUL_LDFLAGS="-L../../xulrunner-sdk/lib -lxpcomglue_s -lxul -lxpcom -lmozalloc -lplds4 -lplc4 -lnspr4 -lpthread -ldl" XPCOM_ABI_FLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib/firefox" make

[swick]

the xulrunner sdk version 22 no longer ships with the xpcom library but it was moved into the xul library. So you can just remove -lxpcom:

XUL_CFLAGS="-I../../xulrunner-sdk/include -I../../xulrunner-sdk/include/nspr" XUL_LDFLAGS="-L../../xulrunner-sdk/lib -lxpcomglue_s -lxul -lmozalloc -lplds4 -lplc4 -lnspr4 -lpthread -ldl" XPCOM_ABI_FLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib/firefox" make

[infinity0]

thanks, will release a new version as soon as i have some personal time

[alci63]

Compiled for Ubuntu 13.04 / Firefox 24. Works fine.

[demetrislambrou123]

i tried to compiled it for elementary os (ubuntu 12.04) with no success. I have the latest firefox (24) and downloaded xulrunner sdk version 24. I tried compiling it with the following command:

XUL_CFLAGS="-I../../xulrunner-sdk/include -I../../xulrunner-sdk/include/nspr" XUL_LDFLAGS="-L../../xulrunner-sdk/lib -lxpcomglue_s -lxul -lmozalloc -lplds4 -lplc4 -lnspr4 -lpthread -ldl" XPCOM_ABI_FLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib/firefox" make

The problem I am getting is:

xpcom_abi.cpp:4:27: fatal error: nsIXULRuntime.h: No such file or directory

I have read most of cases and posts for the extension about compiling it, workarounds etc but because I am a total noob on this I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or is it because firefox 24 with xulrunner sdk version 24 would not compile under elementary os (ubuntu 12.04). Anyone knows how to fix it or what I am doing wrong?

[swick]

are you sure the paths are correct (e.g. ../../xulrunner-sdk/ exists)?

[demetrislambrou123]

oops sorry after pointing out the path I managed to make it work. Working both for firefox 24 and thunderbird 24 on elementary os (ubuntu 12.04). For thunderbird I just changed XPCOM_ABI_FLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib/firefox to XPCOM_ABI_FLAGS="-Wl,-rpath=/usr/lib/thunderbird Is that the correct way?

[sigoa]

make still breaks here, same issue