How to distinguish between dev and production in a Firefox extension I'm building?

Question

In my Google Chrome extension, I'm using this nifty little trick to distinguish the dev version from the production version: How to tell if a Chrome extension is installed by a real user vs. by me during development?

Is there a similar trick I can use for a Firefox extension? I'd like to use some slightly different settings in my code while developing, but without having to manually change them before releasing.

Something like:

if (addon_in_development) {
    setting = 'abc';
}
else {
    setting = 'def';
}

Answer 1

You could set an environment variable in the shell, and detect it like this:

var { env } = require('api-utils/environment');

console.log(env.IS_DEV);
console.log(typeof env.IS_DEV);

if (env.IS_DEV) {
    console.log("IS_DEV is set, we're running under cfx run...");
}
else {
    console.log("IS_DEV is not set?");
}

See the docs for more info:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/1.7/packages/api-utils/environment.html

Using the above use case, you would run cfx like this:

IS_DEV=1 cfx run