Bugs involving multiple extensions
I thought bug 324586: browser.xul leaks (with Flashgot & Adblock Filterset.G Updater installed) was notable for involving multiple extensions. Then I saw bug 325279: Firefox 1.6a1 crash on exit, which requires a combination of four extensions.
I wonder whether these are bugs in the extensions, bugs in Firefox that are tickled by extensions, or problems where the extensions interfere with each other directly (such as two extensions having global variables in browser.xul overlays with the same name).
January 31st, 2006 at 2:02 am
You have a busted link to dbaron’s site, though a .argh TLD is something that I could get behind these days.
January 31st, 2006 at 2:09 am
> (such as two extensions having global variables
> in browser.xul overlays with the same name)
Wouldn’t this raise an exception, or at least a warning?
monk.e.boy
January 31st, 2006 at 2:14 am
Link fixed. Thanks, Shaver.
monk.e.boy, it would raise an exception, but things being broken would be the most visible result. I’m not sure how much would break.
January 31st, 2006 at 6:54 am
Shouldn’t there be a standard for global variables inside extensions to avoid these problems? Maybe some packaging convention?
January 31st, 2006 at 8:00 am
Wow. Also, in his first comment, he says he uses *51* extensions. That’s crazy.
Villa:
Should there be? Yes. Is it enforceable the way things are currently? No.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Some extensions wrap everything in an anonymous function (like in bookmarklets) or in a “class” to limit their impact on the global variable namespace in browser.xul.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:56 pm
It would be great if Firefox gave each extension its own ‘sandbox’ so this could be easily avoidable. If someone were to branch off of your extension, but leave all the function names the same, it can completely kill your extension or theirs depending on the order in which they are installed.