Create a new profile for extension development

http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/geek-to-live%E2%80%94manage-multiple-firefox-profiles-231646.php

Tweak Firefox configuration for extension development

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Setting_up_extension_development_environment

Create a skeleton extension

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensionwiz/

Extract it to the your project folder, for example:

   1  /home/name/projects/my_extension

Setup Firefox to load your extension

Follow these instructions to configure Firefox to load your extension from /home/name/projects/my_extension: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Setting_up_extension_development_environment#Custom_code_location http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Setting_up_extension_development_environment#Using_directories_rather_than_JARs

Install the Extension developer

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensiondev/

Start Firefox with the development profile

   1  firefox-bin -P development -no-remote

To start the default profile use:

   1  firefox-bin -P THE_PROFILE_NAME -no-remote

Build your extension

http://www.xulplanet.com/

The extension wizard includes a build script, but it might be a good idea to upgrade it to the latest version, which can be found here (including a Windows build script): http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bash_build_script

Gotchas

If you’re on windows and using CygWin, you might get this error:

   1  ./build.sh: line 6: $'\r': command not found
   2  ./build.sh: line 29: $'\r': command not found
   3  ./build.sh: line 40: $'\r': command not found
   4  ./build.sh: line 70: syntax error near unexpected token `$'do\r''
   5  '/build.sh: line 70: `for CHROME_SUBDIR in $CHROME_PROVIDERS; do

The solution is to run the dos2unix command on the *.sh files:

   1  d2u build.sh
   2  d2u config_build.sh