Can't Install Signal Private Messenger

[space-potato]

The process seems to get stuck at "Signing "Signal Private Messenger"... Submitting request to addons.mozilla.org (AMO)" and at the end I get a red bar. When I click on "Show failed JSON" I get:

{ "msg": "signing-failed: submit failed", "xhr": { "status": 401, "response": { "detail": "Signature has expired." } } }

This app shouldn't be really bounded to chrome, it's more like a standalone that installs itself through Chrome as an extension, so I guess it shouldn't be a problem to add It on Firefox

[Noitidart]

Thanks for this report. Can you please provide me a link to the extension?

[space-potato]

Here it is: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk

[thrdroom]

I can confirm. I dont have the same but a similar problem trying to installing signal https://github.com/Noitidart/Chrome-Store-Foxified/issues/46

A fix for this would be awesome as signal would rock if not tied to chrome!

[Noitidart]

A patch for signing this addon landed here - https://github.com/mozilla/addons-server/issues/2802#issuecomment-222561801

However in my test today it seems to still happen. So it might be their patch has not yet reached production.

[Noitidart]

I got around the signing issue and I see that this extension uses unsupported APIs. This is the permissions requested by this addon in the manifest.json:

"permissions": ["unlimitedStorage", "notifications", {
    "fileSystem": ["write"]
}, "alarms", "fullscreen", "audioCapture"],

unlimitedStorage, audioCapture and fileSystem are all not supported - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/permissions#permissions

I asked the webext team on IRC if they plan to bring these features to Firefox. Will share their response with you here.

[Noitidart]

After getting around the signing issue, the extension "Signal" fails to install because it uses incompatible stuff:

1476041036769 addons.webextension. ERROR Loading extension 'null': Reading manifest: Error processing permissions.2: Expected string instead of {"fileSystem":["write"]} Log.jsm:753

Invalid match pattern: '[object Object]' MatchPattern.jsm:52

It seems Firefox WebExtensions API does not support this API. It's not even listed here - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Chrome_incompatibilities

[Noitidart]

I filed a bug on bugzilla:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308796

Once they fix it, this addon should install fine, but some of the APIs won't work.

[Noitidart]

They resolved the bug, apparently "Signal" is not a extension, it is an "App". "App"s are not supported by the WebExtension API. Per this comment here - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308796#c1

@thrdroom, @freeasinbear is this true, it is an app? Not an extension?

[Noitidart]

This is also something that was shared with me on IRC:

14:29:54 noit-away: fileSystem and audioCapture are both for chrome apps, not extensions

14:30:39 as for unlimitedStorage, there are several facets to it, but we don't actually put any quote on browser.storage.local right now so you don't need it for that

14:30:46 if you want it for indexedDB or something, there is an open bug

[space-potato]

They resolved the bug, apparently "Signal" is not a extension, it is an "App". "App"s are not supported by the WebExtension API. Per this comment here - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308796#c1

@Noitidart Yeah that's right, it is listed as an app, so there's nothing that can be done?

[Noitidart]

@freeasinbear - from our end we can get into the code of Signal and transition it to an extension. If we don't want to do that, we can wait to see if the WebExt team adds app supprort.

[thrdroom]

@Noitidart I hope for the support of apps by the WebExt team as i dont have much spare time and not that knowledged about the development of extensions.

My deepest hope is that signal messenger gets official supported and developed for firefox by @moxie0

[Noitidart]

Hey all I reached out to the Signal team asking if they can give us a universal or firefox specific client - I'll let you know what their reply is.