Installation
Prerequisites
To develop with the Add-on SDK, you'll need:
-
Python 2.5 or 2.6. Note that versions 3.0 and 3.1 of Python are not supported. Make sure that Python is in your path.
-
Firefox version 4.0 or later.
You can obtain the latest stable version of the SDK as a tarball or a zip file. Alternatively, you can get the latest development version of the Add-on SDK from its GitHub repository.
Installation on Mac OS X / Linux
Extract the file contents wherever you choose, and navigate to the root directory of the SDK with a shell/command prompt. For example:
tar -xf addon-sdk.tar.gz cd addon-sdk
Then run:
source bin/activate
Your command prompt should now have a new prefix containing the name of the SDK's root directory:
(addon-sdk)~/mozilla/addon-sdk >
Installation on Windows
Extract the file contents wherever you choose, and navigate to the root directory of the SDK with a shell/command prompt. For example:
7z.exe x addon-sdk.zip cd addon-sdk
Then run:
bin\activate
You might see an error like this:
ERROR: The system was unable to find the specified registry key or value.
This is a known issue, being tracked as bug 574563, and should not affect the proper functioning of the SDK at all.
Your command prompt should now have a new prefix containing the full path to the SDK's root directory:
(C:\Users\mozilla\sdk\addon-sdk) C:\Users\Work\sdk\addon-sdk>
SDK Virtual Environment
The new prefix to your command prompt indicates that your shell has entered a virtual environment that gives you access to the Add-on SDK's command-line tools.
At any time, you can leave a virtual environment by running deactivate
.
The virtual environment is specific to this particular command prompt. If you
close this command prompt, it is deactivated and you need to type
source bin/activate
or bin\activate
in a new command prompt to reactivate
it. If you open a new command prompt, the SDK will not be active in the new
prompt.
You can have multiple copies of the SDK in different locations on disk and switch between them, or even have them both activated in different command prompts at the same time.
Making activate
Permanent
All activate
does is to set a number of environment variables for the
current command prompt, using a script located in the top-level bin
directory. By setting these variables permanently in your environment so
every new command prompt reads them, you can make activation permanent. Then
you don't need to type activate
every time you open up a new command prompt.
Because the exact set of variables may change with new releases of the SDK, it's best to refer to the activation scripts to determine which variables need to be set. Activation uses different scripts and sets different variables for bash environments (Linux and Mac OS X) and for Windows environments.
Windows
On Windows, bin\activate
uses activate.bat
, and you can make activation
permanent using the command line setx
tool or the Control Panel.
Linux/Mac OS X
On Linux and Mac OS X, source bin/activate
uses the activate
bash
script, and you can make activation permanent using your ~/.bashrc
(on Linux) or ~/.bashprofile
(on Mac OS X).
As an alternative to this, you can create a symbolic link to the cfx
program in your ~/bin
directory:
ln -s PATH_TO_SDK/bin/cfx ~/bin/cfx
Sanity Check
Run this at your shell prompt:
~/mozilla/addon-sdk > cfx
It should produce output whose first line looks something like this, followed by many lines of usage information:
Usage: cfx [options] [command]
This is the cfx
command-line program. It's your primary interface to the
Add-on SDK. You use it to launch Firefox and test your add-on, package your
add-on for distribution, view documentation, and run unit tests.
cfx docs
If you're reading these documents online, try running cfx docs
. This will
build the documentation for the SDK and display it in a browser.
Problems?
Try the Troubleshooting page.
Next Steps
Next, take a look at the Getting Started tutorial, which explains the basic concepts behind the SDK and walks through a simple example.