Installing on Ubuntu 11.04 and Firefox 5.0 is difficult

sudo aptitude install git autoconf xulrunner-dev libboost-dev libpcap-dev hal libhal-dev cd ~/src mkdir firesheep cd firesheep git clone git://github.com/mickflemm/firesheep.git cd firesheep ./autogen.sh --with-xulrunner-sdk="/usr/lib/xulrunner-devel-2.0/" git submodule update --init 

There weren't any errors, but I should have looked deeper into the warnings...

configure.ac:41: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM was called before AC_CANONICAL_TARGET ../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1834: AC_CANONICAL_TARGET is expanded from... configure.ac:41: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM was called before AC_CANONICAL_TARGET ../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1834: AC_CANONICAL_TARGET is expanded from... configure.ac:41: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM was called before AC_CANONICAL_TARGET ../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1834: AC_CANONICAL_TARGET is expanded from... configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-xulrunner-sdk 

But went ahead with the make anyway

make 

Which spouted errors associated with not finding the files it expected in the xulrunner sdk, so ...

sudo apt-get install xulrunner-1.9.2-dev cd ~/src/firesheep/firesheep ./autogen.sh --with-xulrunner-sdk="/usr/lib/xulrunner-devel-1.9.2.17/" git submodule update --init make 

Which seemed to work, until you drag the ~src/firesheep/firesheep/build/xpi file into Firefox and nothing happens (fails quietly). Using Add-ons->settings->install-from-file gave the error message

"Firesheep could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 5.0" 

So hacked the firesheep/firesheep/xpi/install.rdf line 24 to allow a max Firefox version of 5.0 and rebuilt

make 

Which surprisingly didn't barf on the lack of xulrunner-1.9.2-dev libraries (I'd uninstalled to go back too 2.0) and Firefox didn't crash when I installed the new build/xpi file and restarted Firefox. However, all the dialogs in the Firesheep preferences were virtually blank, and definitely unusable, thought it's heartening to see that they can at least display some of the buttons and tab labels.

So Firesheep will definitely need a lot of tweaking to make it work with xulrunner-2.0 and Firefox 5.0 on Linux (Ubuntu 11.04). Hopefully the Firefox 5.0 branch will clear this one up.