Signed webextension xpi not installed

Add-ons addons.mozilla.org
#1

Hello everyone,
We have an issue getting a signed webextension xpi installed/picked by Firefox.

While developing the extension I had successfully set up a proxy file in %appdata%\Mozilla\Extensions{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384} the proxy file pointed to a local folder with the extension files.
On restart, with this proxy file the extension was successfully installed on Firefox Development Edition 51.0a2 (with xpinstalled.signitures.reguired = false)

We signed the extension on AMO, as unlisted, downloaded the signed .xpi file and placed it in our local folder where before we had the unpacked extension files.
I would expect that Firefox will detect the .xpi and propose to install the extension but this does not happen.

I also put the extension directly in %appdata%\Mozilla\Extensions{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384} folder, but still the extension is not installed.

( If I drag and drop the xpi into Firefox, the popup for installing the extension appears but that is not an option for us since we want to install the xpi as part of a native messaging plugin installer. )

According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Installing_extensions
just copying the xpi and name it .xpi should be sufficient since “All WebExtensions based add-ons do not require being unpacked.”

Did anyone have the same issue? or knows if maybe I’m missing something ?

Any idea that could help is welcomed
Thank you!
Adrian

#2

Maybe it will help others:

  1. I could not get firefox to work with proxy files and .xpi. Firefox would automatically delete the proxy file if it was pointing to a xpi

  2. Initially while trying directly with .xpi files I was wrongly omitting a .com in our extension id, in other words the id/name of xpi file was wrong.

By copying the .xpi in the %appdata%\Mozilla\Extensions{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384} folder the extension gets picked up and is proposed to be installed.