アドオンデバッガ

Starting in Firefox 31, the Add-on Debugger lets you run the JavaScript Debugger in the context of an add-on.

From Firefox 32 onwards you can also use the Console, to see logged messages and evaluate JavaScript in the add-on's context, and Scratchpad, to conveniently evaluate multiline JavaScript in the add-on context and save it to a file.

The Add-on Debugger is only available for restartless and SDK-based add-ons. It's still experimental: if you find bugs, we'd love it if you filed them in Bugzilla.

For a quick introduction to the Add-on Debugger, see this screencast:

Opening the Add-on Debugger

To enable the Add-on Debugger you need to check the "Enable chrome and addon debugging" and "Enable remote debugging" settings in Firefox.

To do this, select "Toggle Tools" from the Web Developer menu in Firefox, open the Developer Tools Settings, and check "Enable chrome and addon debugging" and "Enable remote debugging".

Now open the Add-on Manager. Next to the entry for your add-on you will see a button labeled "Debug". Click this button to launch the debugger.

Next you'll see a dialog asking you to accept an incoming connection. Click "OK", and the debugger will start in a separate window. Note that sometimes the debugger window is hidden by the main Firefox window.

Using the Add-on Debugger

The Add-on Debugger looks and behaves very much like the Browser Toolbox, except that while the scope of the Browser Toolbox is the whole browser, the Add-on Debugger is focused on a specific add-on. Like the Browser Toolbox, a toolbar along the top lets you switch between a number of different tools. In Firefox 31 there's only one such tool, the JavaScript Debugger, but with Firefox 32 you also get the Console and Scratchpad.

The JavaScript Debugger

This behaves just like the normal JavaScript Debugger, except its scope is the add-on rather than a web page. On the left-hand side it lists JavaScript sources:

• at the top is bootstrap.js: either the one you've written if your add-on is a manually written bootstrapped add-on, or the one included by the SDK if your add-on is an SDK add-on.
• next, if your add-on is an SDK add-on, you'll find your add-on's main.js, any local modules shipping with your add-on, and any content scripts that are currently loaded
• next, all the SDK modules used directly or indirectly by your add-on

Content scripts

Content scripts are only listed if they are currently loaded. Also, if you set a breakpoint in a content script, it will not be active for instances of the content script which are loaded after the breakpoint is set.

For example, suppose you have an add-on that attaches a content script to every tab the user loads. The content script adds a click handler to the page. As soon as you open a tab, this content script will be listed in the debugger. If you then set a breakpoint in the content script's click handler, then execution will pause whenever you click the page. But if you open a new tab, there are now two instances of the content script, and the breakpoint will not be enabled for the second instance You'll need to set a new breakpoint now if you want to it work for the second instance.

We're investigating improvements to this in bug 1016046.

The Console

The Console behaves just like the Web Console, but its scope is the add-on rather than the web page.

However, note that it actually runs in the context of the add-on's bootstrap.js, which may not be what you expect if your add-on uses the SDK: you won't see any objects defined in your add-on's main.js, and you won't see require() either. This issue is being tracked as bug 1005193.

You can execute Console statements in the context of main.js while execution is paused inside main.js.

The Scratchpad

The Scratchpad behaves just like the normal Scratchpad, but its scope is the add-on rather than the web page.

Like the Console, the add-on Scratchpad runs in the context of the add-on's bootstrap.js even if the add-on uses the SDK, and as with the Console you can execute Scratchpad code in the context of main.js while execution is paused inside main.js.do