Question

I’m trying to install my example extension which has the following directory structure.

myexample
- install.rdf
- chrome.manifest
- content
-- myexample.js
-- myexample.xul

The file chrome.manifest contains:

content myexample chrome/content/

overlay chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
chrome://myexample/content/myexample.xul

It’s pretty minimalist extension.

I created a zip file from it:

zip -r myexample.xpi myexample/

When installing it in Firefox Tools -> Add-ons -> Install Add-on from file ... -> choose myexample.xpi it writes:

This add-on could not be installed because it appears to be corrupt.

Did I something wrong?

Answer 1

The title of your question is misleading – there is nothing wrong with your chrome.manifest. This error message rather means that Firefox couldn’t find install.rdf file at the top level of your add-on. If you run unzip -l myexample.xpi you will see something like this:

  Length     Date   Time    Name
 --------    ----   ----    ----
                            myexample/
                            myexample/install.rdf
                            myexample/chrome.manifest
                            myexample/content/

As you see, all files you zipped have been put into the myexample/ subdirectory instead of being at the top level of the archive. To get the correct result you need to run the following commands:

cd myexample
zip -r ../myexample.xpi *
cd ..