> 
>  Interesting...so what does the download size of that end up being?  And
>  I'm guessing it would be a separate .xpi for every OS?  I actually started
>  this thread over here:
>  http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse
>  _thread/thread/51b4816e5a7b55b8/991ceec869975506?hl=en#991ceec869975506
>  and Mark Hammond mentioned the .xpi but I didn't hear from him again.
> 

The xpi for FF1.5-FF2 (including python binary) is just under 2.5MB on
Windows..  And yes this requires a separate xpi for each platform..


Well, I guess I'm at a crossroads as to which way to go at this point.  I'm
>  wondering if it's worth the effort to do this separate .xpi thing or just
>  package my extension with a python-enabled XULRunner.  Basically it boils
>  down to me hitting walls where functionality is concerned with the Mozilla
>  platform and wishing to extend my extension :)   I've also been looking at
>  this:
>  http://starkravingfinkle.org<http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog/2007/09/hello-js-ctypes-goo
dbye-binary-components/> 
>  /blog/2007/09/hello-js-ctypes-goodbye-binary-components/<http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog
/2007/09/hello-js-ctypes-goodbye-binary-components/> 
>  b/c, let's face it, as the article states creating C++ components is a
>  hell of a job compared to JS components.  And that's another reason I'm
>  looking at Python.
> 
>  That said, if you'd like to work on the script that sounds great and I'm
>  sure the greater community would appreciate your efforts.  But whether I
>  would use it is something I'm still trying to figure out.
> 

Whether you want a Xulrunner app vs. a Firefox extension really comes down
to whether you are extending the capabilities of Firefox or are building a
standalone application..  It seems from FireFTP's homepage that you are
currently extending the functionality of Firefox..

That being said, there is no extra "effort" involved in building the Python
.xpi over building a Pyxpcom enabled Xulrunner..  If you can build a Python
enabled Xulrunner for whatever platform you're targeting then you can build
the Python xpi which requires building Pyxpcom and running Mark's script..
 In fact, the build time for the xpi would actually be significantly less
than building Xulrunner because you only need to build Pyxpcom which you can
do separately from the rest of the beast (
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standalone_PyXPCOM - outdated but you get the
idea)

In any case, I wasn't planning on working on the script, just writing up
what I had to do to get it to work with the 1.8 branches and posting the
resulting Windows and Linux xpi's for FF1.5-FF2..  It doesn't matter whether
you think you'll use this in production, but if it is helpful in making a
decision or understanding the process then I will post this..


Ed