testing-a-xpi.md

Testing a xpi

After adding a new xpi, you almost certainly want to test it locally before moving on to the final release step.

Local development and testing

For local development and testing, you can use about:debugging to side-load an unsigned extension. To enable privileged code to run, you must first set the extensions.experiments.enabled pref to true in about:config.

Once you are happy with your changes and push to the github.com/mozilla-extensions repo, taskcluster will run any build and test targets specified in your package.json.

Additionally, taskcluster will create a "dep-signed" (development signed) build, which uses the staging root.

QA the XPI signed with the staging root

This is the final step before sign-off and contains the same content (other than the signature files) as your production release build.

The Extension signing docs go into some detail on extension signing, here are the relevant parts you need to know:

• the "dep-signed" task generates a XPI artifact signed with the staging root.
• There is no way to load this build in Firefox Release. You must use Firefox Nightly or an unbranded Firefox release build.
• To allow the XPIs signed with the staging root, create the pref xpinstall.signatures.dev-root in about:config and set it to true.

Next step: Releasing a XPI

Now that your add-on is tested, the next step is to release the XPI