I'd really like to do some Abacus development. I just picked up Mozilla 1.8a6 (thank you, Asa & crew), went to install the prerequisite jslib library, then Abacus 0.1.1 so I could go back and fix some bugs. I then restarted Mozilla, and ran through the steps to start Abacus.
It didn't work.
jslib_current_static.xpi is what I usually use. I figure that seems a bit more stable than the cutting-edge jslib-current.xpi. As of a couple weeks ago, it wouldn't install. Now, it installed and couldn't find its own chrome directory.
jslib_current.xpi I then tried out, only to discover that was broken too. MozDev bug 8698 details the problem. (This bug may have been fixed, but the fix wouldn't have propagated yet. They usually make weekly releases, and the last one as of this writing was six days ago.)
The lite version, unsurprisingly, had the same problem.
So, JSLib is currently a little bit broken, in the part that I really need.
I figured, "okay, I'll see if we can get a stable jslib known to work." Specifically, I wanted to see if we could get monthly drops which people could consider stable. (Akin to using 1.7 instead of 1.8a6 as your baseline milestone.) Pete Collins responded (with a cc to the jslib mailing list),
There are too many updated builds posted to keep a running history of past builds. Keeping a history of snaps may be a good idea, but because of the way xpinstall works, it is easy for another app author to blow out the older version of jsLib.
I hope Pete & his team will forgive me for coming up with a solution and mentioning it here. chrome://jslib/content is taken, but what about chrome://jslib-stable/content? (I just sent this suggestion to the jslib list.) Bugs with patches I post to jslib receive a lukewarm reception, too, probably because MozDevGroup has too much on their plate as-is.
By the way, jslib isn't the only application I'm shaking my head in amusement at. Movable Type 3.14 came out just before the new year, essentially fixing the blogspam issue. Which version of MT is MozillaZine running, three or four weeks after the release of MT3.14?
:-) It seems all the people we developers love to have in our court just have other issues to pay attention to until somebody like me opens his mouth. You can't really blame them or get mad at them yet, because I'm just one guy with a blog. Nor are these things show-stoppers for Mozilla development. Just annoyances that I figured I'd write about, that's all.
No flames in the comments, please, for anyone.
Posted by WeirdAl at January 12, 2005 11:35 PM