From: Robert Heller <heller@...>
Date: 2008-09-18T05:52:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Gem program -- cannot install libxslt-ruby-0.3.6.gem

At Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:32:55 -0700 (PDT) Mark Thomas <mark@thomaszone.com> wrote:

> 
> > All I really want to do is sign a couple of FF3 Toolbar extensions in
> > a Makefile using a pure CLI command, and not have to manually sign them
> > with a pointy-clicky tool!
> 
> How exactly does libxslt help you do this?

It is used by the 'spock' program, which is written in Ruby as a CLI
'hack' that allowed the author (of spock) to sign his nightly built
packages (built on a headless server).  FF3 extensions use an XML file
(update.rdf) and libxslt is used to parse this file as part of the
process of 'signing' it (computing a signature from the file's contents
and a private key (the public key is in the installer file,
install.rdf).  This is so FF3 can verify that the update.rdf is
ligitimate.

The Mozilla Dev crew have this xulrunner application, mccoy, which is a
GUI application for creating key pairs and for signing FF3 extensions.
It is not something that is useful for people who use make and/or
other automated build processes (like ant), esp. not on unattended build
servers.

>                                                        

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