As of Firefox 48, extensions must be signed to be able to be used with Firefox stable and beta. Extension developers can use Firefox Developer Edition to continue developing and testing extensions. There is, however, some desire to test on the current stable before releasing to be sure all is well. Unfortunately, Firefox provides no way to disable the signature requirement to test your extensions.
As a workaround, Mozilla provides unbranded builds of Firefox (similar branding to nightlies) for developers to test against. Details are here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded_Builds
I was wondering what the community thoughts would be around providing such a build in portable form. These builds would be English only. They would not be heavily promoted on the site. They would be designed for extension developers *only* and state as much in the EULA as you install. And we would provide absolutely zero support for them.
The reason for the last part is because there are some users who wish to continue using unsigned extensions from third party sources. Such extensions are often the cause of browser instability and a big reason why Mozilla is only allowing signed extensions officially released on addons.mozilla.org. I'm unwilling and unable to spend any time or effort supporting such use cases as my plate is already too full.
I'm debating between the utility of offering such a build for extension developers and the additional development time to package and distribute yet another Firefox build in addition to Stable x19 langs, Beta x19 langs, Dev x19 langs, Nightly, and Nightly x64.
Thoughts?
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Based on your the contents of your third paragraph, and my shared sentiments wrt these use cases, I am very much against providing an additional build, solely for these corner cases.
I would be pleased
If not , I have to live with it and start looking for some alternative
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
I am currently checking Waterfox. It's 100% 64bit. The current vs is 49.0.3, vs branded Firefox at 50.
Beyond that, I'll update you once I have played more.
Given the ease with which a user can, essentially, "package" an unbranded build for him-/herself (using the download from Mozilla), you can simply leave it up to the individual user to do just that. (It's as simple as PAL + custom install of what you get from Mozilla.)
Our small group has built a few Firefox add-ons for our internal use. The onerous signing requirement & methodology has ripped away our ability to use Firefox with auto-updating.
We are looking at clones that do not require signing. Since I have used several portableapps, I would certainly put a thumb on the scale for your product.
I'm not sure how signing is onerous. You can upload the extension to addons.mozilla.org and have it automatically run through the validation tests and then signed for your own distribution without needing to post it for the general public to use. And it's free.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!