There are a couple of little tweaks to Firefoc you can make that will simplify extension development greatly – and I always forget them until I’m neck deep in actual work and don’t feel like adjusting my setup. So here are some essentials, documented for my own purposes in one central place
Setup a development profile
Somewhere along the way, the Mozilla profile manager was marked “uncool” so unless you know it exists, it’s impossible to get to. Set:
profile.manage_only_at_launch true
to always start up with the profile manager.
Disable XUL caching
nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache true
Make changes to your XUL and JS without having to completely restart every time. Launch a new window and find yourself running the latest stuff.
Use unpacked extensions instead of jar files
This one is just a small tweak to your extension packaging process; I use a makefile with a “dev” target to include unpacked files instead of building a jar file. To be honest, I don’t know if there is a real advantage to using jar files in production but that’s just how I’ve done it.
Those couple of tweaks will make extension development a lot smoother. There are some additional options on the Mozilla Developer Center page I lifted most of this from.