sense of packaging firefox' addons?

[chasd]

For the single end user that manages his /her own computer, it  
doesn't matter how the add-on is deployed. In fact, there are  
advantages to the way Firefox handles it. In an environment that is  
managed by a "professional" , using the distribution package manager  
for add-ons has many advantages.

As an administrator, I would prefer to control what Firefox and  
Thunderbird add-ons my users have access to, and allow the system- 
wide management tools to tell me what add-ons are installed and what  
are the exact versions of those add-ons. Some add-on versions are  
locked to a specific Firefox version. An administrator would take  
that into account when rolling out updates. yum /rpm could bark if an  
update to Firefox was attempted before an updated add-on was  
available ( as long as the correct version requires were in the add- 
on package ).

Code for self-application updates ( and add-on updates ) is IMHO  
wasted effort since the code and infrastructure already exists in the  
distro platform ( yum, rpm ). Only in the proprietary OS world do  
applications need to re-invent the update wheel because the OS update  
mechanism is closed to most application developers and is only  
available to the OS vendor for its own applications. Having Firefox  
update itself and its add-ons is a consequence of its deployment on  
Windows. It is not necessarily the best way on Linux.



Charles Dostale