My extension stopped working in FF41, but i cant figure out why

Add-ons Development
#1

hi, my extension stopped working in FF41, but i cant figure out why
i have looked at the Developer notes for FF41 but i can’t identify any of the changes that could have caused the problem i am having

the extension worked fine right up to FF40 stable,
and it even worked when i tested it in FF41 when FF41 was in beta
the interesting thing is the bug that is currently affecting the extension in FF41 stable was occuring at that point when i tested in FF42 which was then in the developer channel, though i assumed that bug was caused by Electrolysis, as i understand FF42 was where Electrolysis was being tested out

somehow some code that was going to be in FF42, got moved forward to FF41, and when FF41 stable came out, i was caught by surprise as my prior testing in FF41 beta had indicated that my extension was working ok in FF41.

i wonder if you know of any particular code blocks that were pushed forward from FF42 to FF41, that may have caused my issue.

my extension is watching for dome node insertions (i know this is being deprecated but it was working fine, and my adage is if its not broke dont fix it)
has the domnodeinserted code actually changed in FF41 as there was no mention of it in the FF41 release notes…

the code works fine in FF40, and chrome, its just since FF41 has been released its stopped working. any idea how i can find out the cause, i’ve tried debugging, but its giving confusing results. is there a log of code that was brought forward from FF42 to FF41. or any other ideas on how i can figure out and fix this issue?

#2

There is usually no replacement for debugging (and be it by inserting console.error() statements into the code) - you need to know which exact code path doesn’t work and how. There is way too much stuff happening in Gecko, guesses won’t work.

#3

OK, i guess you are right, thanks. The strange thing is i tried all the FF41 betas from the ftp archive, and i cant get the extension to work in any of them, whereas i am pretty sure the extension worked in at least one of the FF41 betas that i tested, very weird, but i guess FF addon development is a weird process, so i should get used to it.

#4

well i found the bug in the end. it seems they stopped allowing you
to say
var x;
x[0]=“shite”

#5

That code on it’s own would always have thrown an exception.
The only way that it doesn’t throw is that a var x already existed in that scope and had a value other than null or undefined. And that still works (in Firefox 50.

#6

bizarrely my previous comment, was frozen in carbonite, since oct last year, and when i came back to this site/thread after a long period of absense, my comment which i had written and failed to submit at the time for whatever reason, was still waiting for me in the comment box, i just submitted it, but can’t remember the full version of events, maybe you are right then with your explanation.

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