At this point in time, trying to keep the development addon compatible with prior Firefox versions is already quite difficult and will become even harder very soon.
Please keep in mind that since Firefox 57, only WebExtensions are allowed/possible to install. The only exceptions are Firefox Nightly, with the `xpinstall.signatures.required` preference[1] set to `false`, and the (as of this writing) current ESR release.[2]
With the current compatibility situation, we thus need to effectively support both Nightly *and* ESR in the addon, while trying to keep up with current/upcoming changes in `mozilla-central`. With old addons no longer being officially supported, the amount of old code being removed/refactored is now increasing quite quickly.
*Please note:* The changes proposed here was to a large extent prompted by bugs such as:
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1431533 (already landed)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767640 (already landed)
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1432992 (still open)
Upstreaming all of those changes for the `MOZCENTRAL` version of PDF.js, while also keeping the Firefox addon running in older versions of the browser, would quickly become non-trivial.
Since we're using the ruleset from `eslint-plugin-mozilla` for the addon files, which is enforced in `mozilla-central`, we must ensure that the neccessary changes are upstreamed to the PDF.js repo such that the `mozilla-central` version of PDF.js can still be updated without failures.
Trying to feature detect, for the `FIREFOX` build target, some of the changes in the referenced bugs would probably become both quite messy and (not to mention) difficult. E.g. with the upcoming and automatically defined `Cc, Ci, Cu, Cr` variables, any sort of feature detection might be tricky since those need to be defined in the global scope of the files in question.
Finally, given the amount of effort that we'd now need to spend to even attempt to keep the Firefox addon compatible, I just don't think it's worth the effort any more. Especially since the number of people that have, thus far, been doing this work is *very* low and those resources would be better spend elsewhere.
Unfortunately, this probably means that the development addon will no longer be compatible with release versions of Seamonkey. However the README has already mentioned, for quite some time, that support isn't guaranteed.
*In closing:* For all of the reasons mentioned above, I thus propose that we reduce the maintenance burden of the Firefox addon by only supporting the current Firefox Nightly.
---
[1] While the preference exists, and can be toggled, its value is ignored in non-Nightly versions of Firefox.
[2] There's unbranded builds of e.g. the release/beta versions of Firefox, where old and non-WebExtensions addons can be installed. However those builds can probably be assumed to be officially unsupported, and thus not recommended for users.
Since multiple empty lines is virtually unused in the code-base, and the few cases that do exist look like "typos", let's enforce greater consistency here; please see https://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-multiple-empty-lines.
While this doesn't actually fix the underlying issue, it should prevent the ESLint errors and thus make future PDF.js updates easier.
Compared to updating (and testing) the preprocessor, this seems like a reasonable workaround given its simplicity.
See Bug 1389443 for more information. This allows us to register
PdfJs without waiting for file IO in nsHandlerService to finish.
Once that file IO is finished, we can set everything up properly
and double-check the registration.
http://eslint.org/docs/rules/comma-danglehttp://eslint.org/docs/rules/object-curly-spacing
Given that we currently have quite inconsistent object formatting, fixing this in in one big patch probably wouldn't be feasible (since I cannot imagine anyone wanting to review that); hence I've opted to try and do this piecewise instead.
Please note: This patch was created automatically, using the ESLint `--fix` command line option. In a couple of places this caused lines to become too long, and I've fixed those manually; please refer to the interdiff below for the only hand-edits in this patch.
```diff
diff --git a/extensions/firefox/content/PdfStreamConverter.jsm b/extensions/firefox/content/PdfStreamConverter.jsm
index ea91a71a..0d59dad1 100644
--- a/extensions/firefox/content/PdfStreamConverter.jsm
+++ b/extensions/firefox/content/PdfStreamConverter.jsm
@@ -773,7 +773,8 @@ class RequestListener {
response = function sendResponse(aResponse) {
try {
var listener = doc.createEvent("CustomEvent");
- let detail = Cu.cloneInto({ response: aResponse, }, doc.defaultView);
+ let detail = Cu.cloneInto({ response: aResponse, },
+ doc.defaultView);
listener.initCustomEvent("pdf.js.response", true, false, detail);
return message.dispatchEvent(listener);
} catch (e) {
```
This is a downstream change introduced in [1]. That mozilla bug is adding a new property to channel's loadinfo object (nsILoadInfo) that protocol handlers has to set on channels when originalURI on the result channel is set to a different URI than the channel has been created for.
Existence of the new property on nsILoadInfo depends on landing [1].
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1319111
Please note that I used the addon debugger to set a breakpoint in the `unload` function, in order to ensure that `this` still correctly refers to the `FindEventManager` scope.
In https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1355216, the *third* parameter of `Services.obs.addObserver` was made optional.
However, omitting it in Firefox versions *without* that patch causes failures that completely prevents the addon from working (it won't even load).
As far as I can tell, there isn't *any* way to detect ahead of time if the third parameter can be safely omitted, hence we're forced to fallback to manually checking the version number :-(
*Note:* Since the `PdfJs.jsm` file is only used in the `MOZCENTRAL` build, we at least don't need to add any compatibility hacks there.
If we only invoke the bootstrap-enabled script when PdfJs.enabled is
true, then we don't need to check it again in the script.
This avoids a sync IPC call to the parent process.
It also keeps PdfJs.jsm from importing PdfjsContentUtils.jsm in the
child process until it is actually needed, which is one steps towards
not loading it until it is really needed.
pdfjschildbootstrap.js will always be run, but
pdfjschildbootstrap-enabled.js will only be run if PdfJs.enabled is
true. This will let us avoid some work in the child process in the
next patch.
This will need to be landed in the mozilla-central repository at the
same time as a change to nsBrowserGlue.js. See bug 1352218.
The last (and only) usage of `MOZ_CENTRAL` was removed in PR 3036, so it's been unused for almost four years now.
If we need to have different code-paths for `FIREFOX`/`MOZCENTRAL` builds, the preprocessor should (and has) been used instead.
Given that this patch causes a lot of churn in the addon code, I wouldn't really mind if we ultimately decide against doing this and just add a rule exception in mozilla-central instead.[1]
---
[1] Note that I used the ESLint `--fix` option, hence writing this commit message actually took longer time than the creation of the patch :-)
PR 7322 added the `PdfJsNetwork.jsm` file, instead of the general `src/core/network.js` file for the Firefox addon. However, `make.js` wasn't updated to actually stop including the now obsolete network file.
*Please note: ignoring whitespace changes is most likely necessary for the diff to be readable.*
This patch addresses all the current, in `mozilla-central`, linting failures in the addon. It should thus be possible to change the `.eslintignore` entry for PDF.js in `mozilla-central` from `browser/extensions/pdfjs/**` to `browser/extensions/pdfjs/build/**` and `browser/extensions/pdfjs/web/**` instead.
Note that we cannot, for backwards compatibility reason of the general PDF.js library, at this time make similar changes for files residing in the `build` and `web` directories in `mozilla-central`.
The main changes in this patch are that we now use [classes](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Classes) instead of our previous "class-like" functions, and also use the more compact [object shorthand notation](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/Object_initializer#New_notations_in_ECMAScript_2015).
A couple of functions were also converted to [arrow functions](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Functions/Arrow_functions), to reduced usages of `bind(this)` and `var self = this`.
One caveat with ES6 classes is that it's not (yet) possible to define private constants/helper functions within them, which is why the `NetworkManagerClosure` was kept to not change the visibility of those constant/functions.
Besides testing in Firefox Nightly 53, this patch has also been tested in Firefox ESR 45 and SeaMonkey 2.46.
However, I'd gladly welcome help with testing the patch more, to ensure that nothing has gone wrong during the refactoring.
Fixes the first bullet point of issue 7957.
According to https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar#Past_branch_dates: The *last* ESR version of Firefox 38 was released in April this year, and since June the only available ESR version has been based on Firefox 45.
Now that Seamonkey has *finally* released a new version, i.e. 2.46 which should correspond to Firefox 49, there doesn't seem to be any reason to keep the fallback code around in the addon anymore.
*Please note that most of the necessary code adjustments were made in PR 7890.*
ESLint has a number of advantageous properties, compared to JSHint. Among those are:
- The ability to find subtle bugs, thanks to more rules (e.g. PR 7881).
- Much more customizable in general, and many rules allow fine-tuned behaviour rather than the just the on/off rules in JSHint.
- Many more rules that can help developers avoid bugs, and a lot of rules that can be used to enforce a consistent coding style. The latter should be particularily useful for new contributors (and reduce the amount of stylistic review comments necessary).
- The ability to easily specify exactly what rules to use/not to use, as opposed to JSHint which has a default set. *Note:* in future JSHint version some of the rules we depend on will be removed, according to warnings in http://jshint.com/docs/options/, so we wouldn't be able to update without losing lint coverage.
- More easily disable one, or more, rules temporarily. In JSHint this requires using a numeric code, which isn't very user friendly, whereas in ESLint the rule name is simply used instead.
By default there's no rules enabled in ESLint, but there are some default rule sets available. However, to prevent linting failures if we update ESLint in the future, it seemed easier to just explicitly specify what rules we want.
Obviously this makes the ESLint config file somewhat bigger than the old JSHint config file, but given how rarely that one has been updated over the years I don't think that matters too much.
I've tried, to the best of my ability, to ensure that we enable the same rules for ESLint that we had for JSHint. Furthermore, I've also enabled a number of rules that seemed to make sense, both to catch possible errors *and* various style guide violations.
Despite the ESLint README claiming that it's slower that JSHint, https://github.com/eslint/eslint#how-does-eslint-performance-compare-to-jshint, locally this patch actually reduces the runtime for `gulp` lint (by approximately 20-25%).
A couple of stylistic rules that would have been nice to enable, but where our code currently differs to much to make it feasible:
- `comma-dangle`, controls trailing commas in Objects and Arrays (among others).
- `object-curly-spacing`, controls spacing inside of Objects.
- `spaced-comment`, used to enforce spaces after `//` and `/*. (This is made difficult by the fact that there's still some usage of the old preprocessor left.)
Rules that I indend to look into possibly enabling in follow-ups, if it seems to make sense: `no-else-return`, `no-lonely-if`, `brace-style` with the `allowSingleLine` parameter removed.
Useful links:
- http://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/configuring
- http://eslint.org/docs/rules/
From the discussion in issue 7386, it wasn't really clear if we can restrict addon support to Firefox `45` (i.e. the version that corresponds to the *current* ESR version).
However, we have a bunch of code for *very* old Firefox versions. Hence this patch changes the minimum supported version to Firefox `38` (which was released on `2015-05-12`, and correspond to the *previous* ESR version), and removes code that only applies to old Firefox versions.
Regardless what we end up deciding regarding addon support for previous Firefox versions, given the amount of code that even the Firefox `>= 38` condition lets us remove, I certainly think that there is value in doing this.
