Unless you’re hiding under a rock, you are probably aware that the Mozilla Project has released Firefox 21 today. Additionally, unless you’ve been completely ignoring my recent posts on this blog, you might also realize that Firefox 21 signals a new chapter in the life of the Jetpack project, as we ship the SDK’s module loader and APIs in Firefox 21.

To me this is a big deal, for add-on developers, for Firefox developers, for the entire project. I’d like to thank everyone involved for all the hard work, but in particular there are a few people who deserve special mention:

• Atul Varma & Aza Raskin started Jetpack in 2009 in Mozilla Labs, then rebooted it in 2010, ushering in the modern era of content scripts, CommonJS modules the command-line cfx tool and Add-on Builder.
• Dietrich Ayala, David Mason, Myk Melez & Brian Warner who guided the project through the ‘re-boot’ phase, always with an eye to landing Jetpack’s capabilities in Firefox and revolutionizing how Firefox features are made.
• Dave Townsend, Irakli Gozalishvili and the rest of the current Jetpack team who have done a ton of work coordinating a series of important changes to make the SDK fit nicely into mozilla-central.
• Various Mozilla Labs engineers including Shane Caraveo, Anant Narayanan, Andrew Sutherland & David Ascher who kicked the tires and built prototyped their own crazy ideas based on our shaky prototypes and beta releases.
• Our fantastic contributors who keep showing up with great code for new features and bug fixes.

Now that we ship with Firefox I have decided to dial back the frequency of these posts to every 6 weeks on uplift and instead highlight for developers the new features and bug fixes that have landed in the recent Nightly cycle. As always if you have questions, feedback or want to get involved you can find us on the wiki, on the email list and of course in #jetpack on irc.mozilla.org.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 505
• Bugs created last week: 15
• Bugs fixed last week: 13
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,809
• Open pull requests on Github: 54

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-05-14 10:39:08 PDT

Help out Jetpack by using Stack Overflow! You may not be aware, but one of the most common sites where people ask questions about the Add-on SDK is actually on Stackoverflow.com. Questions are marked with the [firefox-addon-sdk] tag, and several new ones appear each week. While you are there, you should also check out the many questions tagged with [firefox-addon] as well. If you’ve got questions about add-on development yourself or don’t mind helping others, Stack Overflow is a great place to contribute.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 522
• Bugs created last week: 45
• Bugs fixed last week: 19
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,706
• Open pull requests on Github: 48

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-04-09 08:23:50 PDT

Meeting Brief

• we’ve landed the final work to make Panels work with per-Window private browsing, to be released in Firefox 22.
• we’re close to landing platform support for cross-domain xhr in content scripts
• the Firefox team dropped by to talk about collaborating on new Add-on friendly features in Australis.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2013-04-09#Minutes

• We are releasing SDK 1.14rc2 tomorrow, which will also likely be tagged tomorrow as the 1.14 release candidate. In addition to this we are coordinating with the Firefox team and release-drivers to ensure that the code in 1.14 is exactly the same as what we will release in Firefox 21. If you’re maintaining an SDK-based add-on, please help and test your code with ths new RC!
• Last week’s work week in Sunnyvale yielded all sorts of amazing work, look for a post over on hacks.mozilla.org tomorrow for the full details.
• Eddy blogged yesterday about his work on getting Firefox’s Browser Debugger working with SDK-based add-ons.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 509
• Bugs created last week: 37
• Bugs fixed last week: 12
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,646
• Open pull requests on Github: 47

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-03-19 09:20:18 PDT

Meeting Brief

• PWPB support is complete, but 1.14 & Firefox 21 will ship with only partial support for Add-ons that opt in to work in Private Browsing mode.
• Cross-domain capabilities and Panel Positioning changes are close to landing, SDK 1.14 re-packs are on track, and we need to re-evaluate high-priority items as we move into Q2.
• SDK: 1.14 RC1 was released today – test! test!
• Roundtable: discussion on prioritizing deep integrators over work targeted at casual add-on developers.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2013-03-19#Minutes

• The entire developer tools team ( including the Jetpack team! ) will be meeting up in California next week to work together and hack on new ideas. As such, there will be no weekly meeting next week.
• Jetpack Bugmaster Wes Kocher released a module called ‘bmo.js’ that allows SDK developers simple access to the bugzilla api.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 481
• Bugs created last week: 29
• Bugs fixed last week: 20
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,576
• Open pull requests on Github: 35

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-03-05 09:03:12 PST

Meeting Brief

• High Priority: PWPB has lots of pull requests in review, need to focus on Panel work. Need to hash out Panel Positioning design next week in person, Gabor hopes to land cross-domain content script capabilities in Firefox 22.
• SDK: tests getting flakier, help!
• Roundtable: GSOC ideas, bmo.js, windowless docshells, debugging support!

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2013-03-05#Minutes

• Over the last couple of days I’ve published a couple of posts about the near future of the project as we land the SDK’s apis in Firefox: [part 1] & [part 2]. If you have any feedback on these posts, please comment there, below, or ideally post to the Google group.
• We took a hard look at the work we need to ship in SDK 1.14 and decided that, given there is also a team work week coming up the best thing to do is to delay release by 2 weeks. This means that Add-on SDK 1.14 will be released on Tuesday, March 26th.
• Mozillian / Hacker Blake Winton created Whimsy ( code here ), a crazy little Jetpack that adds fun, zany stuff to Firefox, in particular the newtab page.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 475
• Bugs created last week: 43
• Bugs fixed last week: 13
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,532
• Open pull requests on Github: 33

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate, please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-02-26 10:08:05 PST

Meeting Brief

• High priority work: Jetpack has landed! PWPB needs your help, ask Erik!
• SDK: 1.14 has been pushed back a couple weeks to catch all the changes needed, and allow for team meetup travel.
• Roundtable: discussion around squashing commits in to understandable chunks, Eddy’s blog posts, and what to expect for the work week.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2013-02-26#Minutes

Much thanks to Mozillian Marc Chevrier for not only reporting but providing a patch for bug 829651. I love it when developers report into bugs with patches!

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 436
• Bugs created last week: 29
• Bugs fixed last week: 18
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,421
• Open pull requests on Github: 26

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-01-22 08:46:25 PST

Meeting Brief

• Alex is really, really back. Mossop is sick
• Good progress on most high priority goals, considering lowering the priority of cfx-in-js for the time being.
• SDK: we’re pushing out rc3 today, we need ALL THE PATCHES
• Roundtable – new engineer starting in early March, which is conveniently timed with a likely work week.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2013-01-22#Minutes

• It’s a new year! And with that comes a new SDK product road-map for 2013! The blog post is here, and if you have any feedback we’d love to hear about it on this Google groups thread.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 436
• Bugs created last week: 17
• Bugs fixed last week: 10
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,395
• Open pull requests on Github: 25

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2013-01-08 12:54:34 PST

Meeting Brief

• P1 bugs: lots of discussion on landing plans, panel improvements and per-window private browsing.
• SDK: Jeff & Matteo are working with the mobile team to resolve a regression in Firefox 19.
• Roundtable: we talked over work week plans, a possible file API contribution, a code coverage update and a new blogging schedule for the new year.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2013-01-08#Minutes

• We released 1.12 last Tuesday, but there was no weekly update here due to a particularly busy week at an Add-ons Work Week last week.
• Even better, despite some major differences introduced in SDK 1.12, Piotr was able to get Builder updated to support 1.12 last Wednesday.
• Today’s Jetpack meeting was the last meeting of 2012! In fact, there will not be another meeting until Tuesday, January 8th, 2013.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 434
• Bugs created last week: 20
• Bugs fixed last week: 9
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,328
• Open pull requests on Github: 29

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2012-12-18 09:13:09 PST

Meeting Brief

• SDK: high priority bugs, Per-Window Private Browsing, module versioning in the loader and 404s in the docs.
• The tree is orange, but GitGutter for ST2 is awesome!

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-12-18#Minutes

Update: The Add-on Builder has now been updated to support SDK 1.12.

What’s new?

Enhancements to simple-prefs. I’m really pleased to include in this release some much-needed enhancements to the simple-prefs module by contributor ‘taku0‘. Taku0 has really stepped up by implementing radio button and drop-list widgets for simple prefs. Thanks Taku0! Simple-prefs is pretty awesome now, so much so that I cooked up this example on github that displays all the types of prefs you can now use.

SDK layout changes. As I mentioned in my post a few weeks ago, we have dramatically changed the file system layout of the SDK in 1.12 in preparation for shipping the SDK apis in Firefox itself. The next few releases of the SDK will use this layout and we have plans to start testing builds of Firefox with the SDK embedded to ensure that tools such as the Add-on Builder continue to work.

Firefox Mobile support improvements. We’ve implemented support for the tabs api on Firefox for Android, which is a key module that both enables many common add-on use cases, and was also causing many of our tests to fail. If you’ve been curious about kicking the tires using the SDK on mobile, this new version is a good starting point.

You can much more detail about SDK 1.12 in the release notes.

Some interesting stats about this release ( from the github history between the 1.11 & 1.12 tags ):

• 294 changes in 50 pull requests between tags 1.11 and 1.12
• Community contributors: Blake Winton, Gregg Lind, Markus Stange and taku0.

As always, we’d love to hear from you about your experiences with this release. You can contact us in a variety of ways:

post to our discussion group
chat with us on irc.mozilla.org #jetpack
report a bug
check out the source and contribute bug fixes, enhancements, or documentation

For more information on the Jetpack Project check out our wiki.

• Jetpack engineer Eddy Bruel gave a talk recently at Amsterdam JS on his work on Spidermonkey and how the guts of the JS engine work.
• Eddy also recently blogged about his experiences as a C++ developer writing his first Firefox add-on with the Add-on SDK
• In the next couple of weeks members of the Jetpack team will be descending upon Singapore for Mozcamp Asia 2012! Erik & Matteo will be giving a talk on Nov 15th about developing add-ons for Mobile Firefox using the SDK, and Irakli will be giving a talk at Mozcamp on how to develop Firefox features using the SDK.

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 414
• Bugs created last week: 25
• Bugs fixed last week: 9
• Total SDK-based Add-ons on AMO: 1,190
• Open pull requests on Github: 38

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2012-11-06 08:57:00 PST

Meeting Brief

• Builder: I reported to the team on some coarse AMO stats showing Builder add-ons vs the downloaded SDK.
• SDK: No beta today – only one change since last week.
• Roundtable: more code coverage info from Gregg, mobile testing, discussion around the feature miss survey.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-11-06#Minutes