How to export a single Firefox extension as an installable xpi file? [duplicate]

Question

Once upon a time I have installed an extension, that is no longer available: YouTube Smart Pause .

Is there any way to export this extension back into the xpi file, so I can give it to my friends?

There are solutions that allow exporting whole extension collection (FEBE, Firefox sync, etc.). I am asking for a way to export a single extension.

Answer 1

Often you can do the export manually by copying the xpi file out of your firefox profile. This is a Linux example, but a similar method would work for Windows:

mkdir somextension
cd somextension/
cp ~/.mozilla/firefox/5x0w1g3w.weave24a/extensions/jid0-k75TfRGfOXPHfEZmJ9cKu5eCgLc\@jetpack.xpi .
mkdir orig
cd orig
unzip ../jid0-k75TfRGfOXPHfEZmJ9cKu5eCgLc\@jetpack.xpi

The above example copies an xpi out of my firefox profile into a working directory and then uses unzip to extract the files into a subdirectory orig/

You don't need the extract step if you are simply interested in the xpi file.

Answer 2

Quote from ::Momzillazine:: - Installing Extensions

Extension files are located in the "extensions" subfolder of the ::profile folder:: (single-user) and in the "extensions" subfolder of the ::installation directory:: (global); there is one folder per extension, named using their ID codes. To tell which is which, look inside each folder’s "chrome" subfolder where you will find some human-readable information regarding the extension.

Note: Starting in Gecko 2.0 (Firefox 4 / Thunderbird 3.3 / SeaMonkey 2.1), XPI files are no longer unpacked when extensions are installed. Instead, the XPI itself is placed in the extensions directory, and files are loaded directly out of the package.

On Windows 7, open folder: "%APPDATA%\Mozilla\" Go to Mozilla > Firefox > Profiles > *.default > extensions

Here you'll find some xpi files, and your firefox extension .xpi will be among that list.