Why are there so many Mozilla plugins directories?

[Florian Diesch]

Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> writes:

> I seem to find, on 9.04 or 9.10, that there are separate directories for:
>
> /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
> /usr/lib/firefox-[version]/plugins
> /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
> /usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins
> /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins
>
> Some of these are links to other ones, some are empty.
>
> Most contain symlinks to various things in /etc/alternatives which
> then link to actual plugins for media players, java, etc.
>
> Why so many? Wouldn't a single linked or union directory be easier, or
> am I missing something important?

This allows to have specific plugins for a given version of Firefox,
plugins for any Mozilla or XULRunner based software, ...  Also some
third-party software ma expect to be installed in some of this
directories for historic reasons.

The alternatives system is there to manage different packages providing
the same functionality, see man update-alternatives



   Florian
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