For enterprise use, the system administrator wants to manage addons via MCD (Mission Control Desktop) mechansim. For example: activate "dangerous" versions of other addons even if they are blocked by Mozilla. Currently it is possible with addons using AddonManager.jsm, however, after XUL is ended we need something to alter it. Add-on hotfix mechanism https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/Add-on_hotfix and custom update manifest seems similar to this purpose, however, it is not guaranteed that it is executed on the startup immediately.

Just a note that the ability to list all add-ons and uninstall them is covered in Chrome as well by the management API: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/management. It does not allow you to install, enable or disable however. This would also need permissions to be implemented.

Thank you for pointing! Currently there seems to be no existing bug for "chrome.management", except the bug 1220136 about self-uninstallation. Should I separate this bug for two steps: 1) implementing "chrome.management" compatible to Google Chrome and 2) extending it with new permissions and new methods to enable/disable addons?

There's a few bugs on management: http://arewewebextensionsyet.com/#management, feel free to file any other. Please give them the [management] whiteboard tag. Needless to say we should have permissions that prompt the user around these APIs. Also we should approach install carefully, it should only be possible to install another signed WebExtension add-on for example, otherwise we've got a simple escape out of the sandbox.

A first release of this should be behind bug 1280235. Anything else would need to pass a security review.

Bulk move of bugs per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1483958