Bug#573250: mozilla-devscripts: install-xpi unpacks to wrong location, contradicts https://wiki.debian.org/Mozilla/ExtensionsPolicy

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Package: mozilla-devscripts
Version: 0.20
Severity: normal

The current draft of https://wiki.debian.org/Mozilla/ExtensionsPolicy
suggests:

> Packages shipping extensions for XUL-based applications like
> iceweasel or icedove should put unpack the contents of the extension
> in a folder in /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/common.

It also says:

> It is recommended to use mozilla-devscripts. It will realize the
> policy for you.

However, using mozilla-devscripts 0.20 on a new xul-ext-monkeysphere
package, i see the file getting unpacked into
/usr/share/xul-ext-monkeysphere instead. (and then linked to from each
compatible application's private extensions directory in
/usr/share/mozilla/extensions/{xulapp-id}/{extension-id}).

I'm using plain debhelper as instructed with:

override_dh_auto_install:
	install-xpi monkeysphere.xpi

I realize there was some discussion over whether
/usr/share/mozilla/extensions/common was the right choice, but we
should either fix the policy draft or we should fix the install-xpi.
it seems silly to have them disagree.

IIRC, the best argument in favor of modifying the draft to match the
current behavior of install-xpi was: do we have xulrunner apps scan
for compatible packages each invocation?  or do we figure out which
apps are compatible at extension installation time?  opting for the
latter seems more efficient.

IIRC, the best argument in favor of modifying install-xpi to match the
current draft of policy was that upstream xulrunner apps are all going
to default to looking in the same place in the future.  I'm not sure
whether the xulapps will subsequently stop looking in their private
extensions directory as well.

Can we align the policy and the tool somehow?

    --dkg

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-trunk-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mozilla-devscripts depends on:
ii  dpkg-dev                      1.15.5.6   Debian package development tools
ii  fakeroot                      1.14.4-1   Gives a fake root environment
ii  perl                          5.10.1-11  Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  python                        2.5.4-9    An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-rdflib                 2.4.2-1+b1 RDF library containing an RDF trip
ii  python-support                1.0.6.1    automated rebuilding support for P
ii  quilt                         0.48-5     Tool to work with series of patche
ii  unzip                         6.0-4      De-archiver for .zip files
ii  wget                          1.12-1.1   retrieves files from the web
ii  zip                           3.0-3      Archiver for .zip files

mozilla-devscripts recommends no packages.

Versions of packages mozilla-devscripts suggests:
ii  cvs                         1:1.12.13-12 Concurrent Versions System
ii  git-core                    1:1.7.0-1    fast, scalable, distributed revisi
pn  mercurial                   <none>       (no description available)

-- no debconf information