Years ago someone asked me what the fastest way to stand up an App Marketplace was. After considering that we already had several Add-on Types in AMO I replied that it would be to create another Add-on Type for apps, use the AMO infrastructure as a foundation for logins/reviews/etc. and do whatever minor visual tweaks were needed. This was a pretty quick solution but the plan evolved and “minor visual tweaks” turned into “major visual changes” and soon a completely different interface. Fast forward a few years and we have two separate sites (addons.mozilla.org and marketplace.firefox.com) running out of the same code repository but with different code. Much of the code is crudely separated (apps/ vs mkt/), but there are also many shared files, libraries, and utilities, both front and backend. The two sites run on the same servers but employ separate settings files.

There has been talk about combining the two sites so that the Firefox Marketplace was the one stop shop for all our apps/add-ons/themes/etc. but there was reluctance to move down that path due to the different user expectations and interfaces – for example, getting an app for your phone is a lot different flow than putting a theme on Firefox. While the debate has simmered with no great options the consequences of inaction continue to grow. Today’s world:

• Automated unit tests which take far longer than necessary to run because they run for both sites.
• Frustration for developers who change code in one area and affect a completely different site.
• Confusion for any new employees or contributors as they struggle to set up the site (despite our decent documentation).
• A one-size-fits-all infrastructure approach with no ability to optimize for the very different sites (API/service based vs standard MVC)

The best way to relieve the stress points above is complete separation of addons.mozilla.org and marketplace.firefox.com. Read the full (evolving) proposal. Feedback welcomed.

http://micropipes.com/blog/2014/01/31/splitting-amo-and-the-marketplace/