Quick and easy question for Firefox add-on developers

Question

I follow the instructions here to create a development environment for firefox: https://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2009/01/28/how-to-develop-a-firefox-extension/

and everything works fine.

On the page, as you can see, there is one instruction:

Direct the Firefox extension directory to the extension

Instead of constantly preparing and reinstalling your extension, an easy way is to add a pointer from your Firefox extension directory to your code. To do this, you must first find your profile directory: ...

And it works great too!

My question is:

When I make changes to the JS file in the dev directory, do I need to restart FF for the changes to take effect? Because when I create the extension in Chrome, there is a simple link that says “reload” and clicks that reloads the extension without having to restart the browser ... is there such a function for FF?

Thanks!
R

Answer 1

Extension expansion extension has the ability to reload chrome. To do this, you must restart the extension without restarting Firefox.

Answer 2

It really depends on the javascript files. XPCOM components and JavaScript modules are loaded only once, and you inevitably need to restart them when changing them. JavaScript files loaded with <script> tags are only valid for a loadable window. Opening a new window will load a new copy of the script. All this will work only if the -purgecaches command line -purgecaches is specified as people already noted.