Hi,
Following is my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong
anywere.

As per my understanding mozilla uses plug-in architecture to increase
its functionality at runtime. For this, it uses plugins and extensions
which are in form of  DSO's (Dynamic shared objects) (ie. .so .dll
etc...).
And it uses dlsym() and dlopen() like application programming
interface for dynamic linking loader to activate the DSO's as and when
they are needed.

If this is the way mozilla implements its plug-in architecture then
why do we need to restart the firefox when we install new extension or
update existing extension ?
As programming interface for dynamic linking loader allows you to open
new DSO, close existing DSO and reopen it again with newer version,
then is it not possible to update existing extensions or load new
extensions without restrating the browser ?

Can I know why exactly there is need to restart the browser for new
extensions to get activated ?

Can I get pointers to some documentation or code which deals with how
exactly these new DSO's are loaded and how these newly installed
extensions come to life ?

Regards,
Pravin Shinde

_______________________________________________
dev-tech-xpcom mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-xpcom

Reply via email to