I’ve read in the developer release notes for the upcoming release of Firefox 108 that extension version numbers will cause a warning if they don’t follow a new “simplified” format. I also ran into a warning from the add-on validator when recently uploading a test version of an extension, which said that the version string needs to be “simplified” because it won’t be compatible with MV3.
I’m concerned that the new “simplified” format, where only numeric digits will be allowed, will be too restrictive for those situations where add-on developers are releasing test builds of their extensions, such as beta releases and release candidates. Denoting such builds with version numbers such as 2.0b1
(for the first beta release of version 2.0) or 4.4rc2
(for the second release candidate of version 4.4) provides more clarity as opposed to a convoluted version numbering system that I’ve seen in other software (e.g. 5.98.6
, 5.99.3
, 5.998.1
or 5.999.2
). In the latter examples, none of these version numbers make it obvious whether it’s an alpha, beta, technical preview or release candidate of what’s presumably an upcoming version 6.0 release.
If Mozilla is firm on moving to this “simplified” version numbering scheme, are there any plans to support the version_name
key in the extension manifest, which other browsers support?