Comments on: XULRunner Session – Summit 2008

By: just bread

just bread — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:22:06 +0000

To the Point:
- Improved tool support (IDE)

Have a look at the Pencil Project: http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html

By: Mozpad Post Mortem « davidwboswell

Mozpad Post Mortem « davidwboswell — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:14:50 +0000

[...] There’s a lot of interest and ethusiasm around this topic and hopefully we’ll see some increased activity around XULRunner [...]

By: Micheil

Micheil — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:21:17 +0000

hmm.. I just got an idea for xulrunner applications and updating:
would it be possible, being that xulrunner is currently in a subdirectory of most applications folders, to have xulrunner update, and then have the application it’s self release updates?

In otherwords, two independent updates. The way to work around incompatibility there would be to auto generate a list of functions, or xpcom calls the application makes, and then check it against a list of changes, if an update has been provide to xulrunner that breaks a component, then the application doesn’t update xulrunner, but tells the user that the application may be compromised, as it isn’t compatible with the latest xulrunner.

So a basic flow of that system would be:
application -> check for updates:

-> xulruner -> updates ? no; return : yes, download list of changes -> check compatibility -> is compatible ? no, return ; yes, continue updating xulrunner.

-> application -> updates ? no, return ; yes -> check compatibility with installed xulrunner -> is compatible ? no, return ; yes -> download and install.

Hopefully this makes sense; it does at the time of writing, and it’d mean that you know longer need to release a new version of your application when xulrunner is updated, if there aren’t issues.

That’s my thoughts, anyone else?

By: arno.

arno. — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:56:47 +0000

I’m not sure exactly what you mean about command line scaffold generator, but if you mean a command line to generate a working minimial xulrunner project, I’ve made some steps in that direction already:
http://www.fdn.fr/~arenevier/mozilla/

By: Brian King

Brian King — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:16:13 +0000

Ian : that extension lives for Firefox as well, but I am not sure how up-to-date it is.

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensiondev/

At Mozdev we are working on an initiative to get more tools into one place and keep them maintained.

Mark, RE Patch Gardening. Do you envision a new role for someone in the community doing this. It does not necessarily need to be full-time. It could be possibly sponsored by MoFo and/or a group of interested parties working together.

By: Ian McKellar

Ian McKellar — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:01:08 +0000

Re: tools

One of the Songbirders, Matt has written a Songbird Developer Tools extension that bundles together and adapts a couple of Firefox extension but adds a really neat Extension developer wizard that let’s you build a skeleton extension with the integration points you want built into it. I’ve been hacking on Mozilla for over seven years now, but I still find myself using that to create extension. It could be adapted beyond Songbird to be a generic addon skeleton extension.

http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/68