First you are attributing the Addons incompatible problem with Firefox instead of the true source of the problems, the Addons Developers. It is they who need to be compatible with the newer version for it to work. In my case, Firebug, Web Developer and Colorzilla need to work to be compatible with the newer version before it comes out, that is why it enters nightly, alpha, beta, rc stages. So it gives a change to the addon developers to have their work ready for the newer version.
But since this is not really a problem with the addon developers or the users that use them. It is a problem with time. Before this whole new release cycle. Devs had more time to work on their addons. With the new one their almost 8-9 month cycle went rapidly to a 2 week to 6 weeks time cycle. Very little for a dev.
So what has Mozilla proposed?
By default, starting from Firefox 8, addons will be assumed compatible with the latest firefox enhanced version of the addon manager until proven otherwise, either by a check to see if the addon gives an error (by user) or by the dev. This way if a particular addon has worked in all Firefox, the user has a chance to say that he/she would like the addon to still be enable in the latest firefox.
This helps in 2 points:
Point 1 - User can use an "old" addon in a new release. Removing the "What the hell do you mean is incompatible" face of the user.
Point 2 - Developer has time for more features and compatibility since a version change in Firefox will not (in most cases) affect the compatible nature of the addon and this way, giving the developer a bigger time frame. Bigger time frame = happier developer = haz cheezeburger
Lastly. I want to install version 6.
Ok the command aptitude
has an option -t
to tell which version of a package you wish to install. it also has an option for forbid-version
to disable an upgrade to a particular package. Anyway there are a couple of more that you could see with aptitude --help