Future development of Pentadactyl

[wshanks]

The commit logs have been fairly quiet recently (1 commit over the last 3+ months) and the developers have not responded to several mailing list posts and GitHub issues posted over the last seven months or so regarding upcoming Firefox changes that will render Pentadactyl unusable. So the question is where does Pentadactyl go from here. Here are some major roadblocks for Pentadactyl that need to be addressed:

1. Distribution / promotion

   The version of Pentadactyl hosted on AMO has been incompatible with Firefox Release for most of the last two years. The Pentadactyl website has been out of date for years as well. Now, even the nightly builds are often unreliable or out of date. An updated version of Pentadactyl needs to be the first version users find when they search AMO or the web. Issue Pentadactyl distribution #26 has more details about this issue.

2. Extension signing

   On January 26, 2016, Firefox Release will require that extensions be signed, rendering Pentadactyl unusable unless it is signed. To be signed, it must be uploaded to Mozilla's site by the developers. Alternatively, it could be forked and given a new add-on id and that version could be uploaded by a third party. However, Pentadactyl is very complex and will not pass the automated tests part of the extension signing process. Getting something as complex as Pentadactyl through a manual review will be difficult and require a lot of effort (developers who understand the Pentadactyl code base will have to advocate for why certain sections of the code are secure and should be allowed through Mozilla's approval process despite tripping automated test failures). Issue Firefox 42 will require extension signing #79 has more on this subject.

3. Electrolysis

   Electrolysis (multi-threaded version of Firefox) will at some point become the default and then later on the shims that allow add-ons written to work with single-threaded Firefox to work in Electrolysis will be removed. More testing is needed but as is Pentadactyl will be unusable with Electrolysis and without the compatibility shims. This issue was first raised in issue Add support for e10s #50 (edit: originally this said Firefox 42 / Electrolysis / links broken #84), though there is not much content there right now.

4. Deprecation of XUL and XPCOM

   Further into the future (~18-24 months), Firefox plans to transition away from XUL-based add-ons. At that point, only add-ons using the Add-ons SDK or the WebExtensions API will work with Firefox. All signs point to the Add-ons SDK also being phased out slightly further into the future. The WebExtensions API does not allow for all of the functionality of Pentadactyl (this is why there is full-featured equivalent of Pentadactyl for Google Chrome and why the closest thing, Vimium, has to use some convoluted code to get as much functionality as it can). Developers who understand Pentadactyl and the WebExtensions API well need to start advocating now for new API's that will allow Pentadactyl's features to be created with WebExtensions.

Some avenues that could be explored:

• Merging with Vimperator. Vimperator is still under active development. I don't know enough about it to know what Pentadactyl features it lacks or if the developers would be willing to add them. Also, I don't know how well the Vimperator developers are prepared to deal with all of these issues, but the more resources put behind one effort the better most likely (this seems like the most relevant issue: Mozilla to deprecate XPCOM and XUL addons vimperator/vimperator-labs#264).
• Creating a maintenance fork of Pentadactyl. We could fork Pentadactyl and try to get it signed as suggested above, but this could prove difficult for the reasons given above. Alternatively, we could use the Developer build of Firefox that does not require signing, but this build has not yet been released and it is yet to be seen how it will work in practice. This would allow Pentadactyl to continue to be used near term until issues 3 and 4 above hit.
• Rewrite Pentadactyl using WebExtensions. This would be a lot of work but provides the most stable future for Pentadactyl. As noted above, new API's would be required, so developers would have to work with Mozilla to have them implemented.
• Continue Pentadactyl with developer support. One of Pentadactyl's developers works on the Mozilla Add-ons team, so he is probably the most qualified person in the world to guide Pentadactyl through all of the issues outlined above. I can understand how all of these changes might require too much time for the developers to deal with, but I know there are several members of the Pentadactyl community who would love to help if there were any way that we could.

[polyzen]

Vimperator will also have to be rewritten. It would be something if these two could merge in that process..

[vyp]

I'm not actually sure the vimperator developers would be interested in pentadactyl-like features. As I understand it, there was a little 'bad blood' between both parties at the time of the fork. On the other hand, that was quite some time ago, so maybe I am not recalling correctly, or maybe the circumstances have changed.

[j127]

I'd be interested in helping to save Pentadactyl.

[polyzen]

@vyp, perhaps Vimperator will have to be forked again after the rewrite :p

[vyp]

https://superuser.com/a/261731 may also provide a little more context regarding vimperator vs pentadactyl (note that that's the main developer of vimperator at the time).

[j127]

I've tried it and switched back to Pentadactyl.

[loopified]

Why give no answer to the community? "Hey guys, we are not going to keep working on this. Thanks for everything." or "Hey, we are alive and trying to sort things out."? It's not like they don't see the Github notifications. It's not like @kmaglione is unaware that the community expects an answer from him. Step up guys. I know this is "free" stuff, so just give us a "get out" or "we got this". People like me came to depend on Pentadactyl to do our everyday computer stuff.

[oddRaven]

I started using Pentadactyl because Vimperator wasn't able to do something, switched back recently due to incompatibility with Firefox 42. It works, but it doesn't feel as advanced as Pentadactyl, it doesn't try to do everything in the commandline. I'd like to help keeping Pentadactyl stay alive but I don't have any experience working on Firefox extensions (yet).

[amosbird]

Going back to Vimperator is not an option for me.

[congma]

I wonder how this will affect Pentadactyl: Firefox Bug 1222546 - Product plan: remove support for heavyweight themes.

Does Pentadactyl use themes?

[polyzen]

@congma, I doubt that will affect us. You can change the colorscheme of penta itself, but that doesn't affect ff's theme

[wshanks]

@congma The previous announcements already called out major changes to Firefox that require major refactoring of Pentadactyl, so this announcement doesn't have too much direct impact (Pentadactyl is an extension, not a theme). However, the changes to themes do indicate a restructuring of how Firefox allows its UI to be modified, so that might impact how the statusbar and command line would have to be implemented.

The discussion in that bug is very relevant to the issues facing Pentadactyl though because themes are undergoing similar changes to extensions to align with the changes to Firefox/XUL/XBL and because @kmaglione (Pentadactyl developer) is one of the main participants. He even references Pentadactyl at the end of this comment (the only time I have seen him acknowledge the impact of the upcoming changes on Pentadactyl:

I do think that it sucks that there's going to be such a sharp transition for add-on developers, and I say this as the developer of one of the largest, most complex extensions for Firefox power users. But I also think that it's necessary, and in the end will make things better for just about everyone.

• Kris Maglione

[polyzen]

@willsALMANJ, and just two days ago. Good to hear

[xificurC]

I'd love to hear some update from the devs too. I use pentadactyl everyday and would like to see it getting a bit more active, while there is still time. vimfx and vimperator are not even close to what pentadactyl provides.