handling extensions in a canonical (no pun intended)

[Remco]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 2:22 AM, Mackenzie Morgan<macoafi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 12 June 2009 3:05:14 pm Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
>> Heya
>>
>> This reminds me of per-user installed deb's (not supported) vs global
>> install's which clog up every users. For one in Ubuntu we have e.g.
>> plugins OOo in the repo. But if you install them there is no option
>> for unpriviledged users to disable it =/ it's just gray in OO.o
>
> I don't believe that's the case with Mozilla applications.  If you install a
> Firefox extension from the package manager right now, it is still possible for
> a user to disable it within their own local Firefox while still keeping it
> installed system-wide.

You mention something that the Patrick seems to miss: Ubuntu already
has packages in the repositories for Firefox. This could be done for
many other programs too (and probably has been for some). But, that
would put a LOT of strain on packagers. Firefox alone has thousands of
extensions, managed by Mozilla.

I have a silly idea: why use the package manager for system-wide
extensions? The package manager is used for dependency resolution, but
since Mozilla and others already have their own system set up, it is
unnecessary to replicate the behavior. Can't there be an "Install
system-wide" button in the Firefox extensions window next to the
normal "Install" button?

Now, that might not alleviate the burden of system administrators, who
can't just use Synaptic, but have to use each application's own
extension mechanism. That is the root of the problem for Patrick, I
think. This problem could be solved at a later stage when PackageKit
is introduced in Ubuntu. Then, each application's extension mechanism
can announce the available extensions to PackageKit, and then they
would show up in Synaptic by magic.

Remco