Bug#698426: iceweasel: Please suggest applications handling mime type

[Mike Hommey]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 09:46:06AM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Mike Hommey]
> > I mean an http server. Their plugin finder in firefox sends requests
> > to an http server.
> 
> Ah, right.  did not know this.
> 
> I had a look at the source to try to figure out how hard it would be
> to change this.  The source is in toolkit/mozapps/plugins/content/,
> and it a xul plugin written in javascript.
> 
>   pere at host:~/src/iceweasel-10.0.12esr$ ls ./toolkit/mozapps/plugins/content/
>   pluginFinderBinding.css       pluginInstallerWizard.xul
>   pluginInstallerDatasource.js  pluginProblemBinding.css
>   pluginInstallerService.js     pluginProblemContent.css
>   pluginInstallerWizard.css     pluginProblem.xml
>   pluginInstallerWizard.js
>   pere at host:~/src/iceweasel-10.0.12esr$
> 
> I guess this is the reason why it is talking to a http server, perhaps
> it is hard to talk to local services from a XUL plugin?  I do not know
> much about XUL plugins nor able to code in JavaScript, so I am not
> sure how to help here.

There are several ways in which javascript can call native code.
It's possible to call it directly with js-ctypes, although a bit
cumbersome, or to call it through a xpcom component which acts as a
proxy. If the packagekit (or whatever else) API is simple enough,
js-ctypes might be the best choice.

Mike