Stylus: [Firefox] Consider having a development channel of the add-on on AMO

[FatOrangutan]

It seems that updates to the add-on often get stuck in AMO's review queue. So it might be a good idea to have a development channel of the add-on. Although this channel needs to be reviewed too, the versions are published immediately and also served via auto-updates for people who installed the dev channel.

Other add-ons like uBlock, Tampermonkey etc. also keep development channels to avoid long queue wait times.

[schomery]

We don't have any developer version currently. Note that we cannot publish the same source code with two versions (like 1.1.3b1, and 1.1.3).

So basically to activate the developer channel we need to have beta versions ending with "b#". I don't think this is what we are looking for. Anyway if we are going to have these developer versions, then we need to have "pre-releases" in the GitHub as well.

[tophf]

Assuming we don't change anything here in the repo, can we first publish on the dev channel and then, after a month of testing in the wild, publish the same version to the release channel on AMO?

[schomery]

probably yes. But the idea behind having a developer channel is to attract contributors to test beta versions. If I recall correctly if you are on the developer channel, you will only get updates from the developer channel. Anyway, this developer channel is for those projects that release a few beta version before an actual release version to find bugs.

[tophf]

Well, my rationale is that AMO/webstore reviewers are insane so any technically viable means to overcome the insanity will do.

[stonecrusher]

Is there a way to manually load the latest version from github into Firefox?

I guess the problems are packing and signing?

Sorry for hijacking this issue but I think having the latest version to test would have been the purpose of a dev channel on AMO.

/edit

Signing shouldn't be a problem if you install Firefox Developer Edition you can load addons without signature. So I just need to know how to pack it and install?

[Mottie]

You can manually do it as follows:

• Select all files and folders, except the .git and .github, and compress them into a zip file. In Windows, right click then choose "Send to" >"Compressed (zipped) folder".
• Change the zip file extension to .xpi.
• In a development or Nighty version of Firefox, go to about:debugging#addons
• Click on the "Load Temporary Add-on" button, then find and load the .xpi file that you just created.

[stonecrusher]

Thanks! It's so easy, didn't know it's just zipped and renamed. Now I only need to remember to go to about:debugging instead of about:addons ("install from file" doesn't work).

[tophf]

Recently Stylus gets reviewed fast (like in a day) so I'm closing this.

[stonecrusher]

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/09/21/review-wait-times-get-shorter/

[tophf]

We have a separate development channel now: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/styl-us/versions/beta