Maintenance of the Mozilla packages in the new world

Registered by Chris Coulson

This session should discuss how we adapt to the new rapid release process for Mozilla packages. In particular:

- How do we distribute translations?
- What do we do with xulrunner and friends?
- How do we support toolchains on older releases? (eg, mozilla-central no longer builds with gcc-4.4, and official mozilla.org builds of Fx 6.0 will build with PGO, which requires gcc-4.5 if we are to use that)

We also need to start planning to migrate Lucid, Maverick and Natty to the new process

Blueprint information

Status:
Complete
Approver:
Martin Pitt
Priority:
High
Drafter:
Chris Coulson
Direction:
Approved
Assignee:
Chris Coulson
Definition:
Approved
Series goal:
Accepted for oneiric
Implementation:
Implemented
Milestone target:
milestone icon ubuntu-11.10-beta-1
Started by
Martin Pitt
Completed by
Chris Coulson

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

Work items (oneiric-alpha-2):
[chrisccoulson] Figure out how to support mozvoikko, enigmail and lightning (binary extensions): DONE

Work items:
[chrisccoulson] Update eclipse to not depend on xulrunner: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove python-gtkmozembed dependency from screenlets or drop from archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove python-gtkmozembed dependency from listen or drop from archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove python-gtkmozembed dependency from lernid or drop from archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove python-gtkmozembed dependency from gramps or drop from archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove python-gtkmozembed dependency from pytrainer or drop from archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove python-gtkmozembed dependency from penguintv or drop from archive: DONE
[seb128] Kill python-gtkmozembed: DONE
[mozillateam] Drop geekast (actually, this has already gone): DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove xulrunner build dep from ruby-gnome2 and drop libgtk-mozembed-ruby*: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop libgtk2-mozembed-perl: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop libjdic-java (no rdeps): DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop instantbird: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Evaluate gpac build-depend on xulrunner-dev, remove this or drop from the archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Evaluate vlc build-depend on xulrunner-dev, switch to firefox-dev if appropriate: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Evaluate moon build-depend on xulrunner-dev, switch to firefox-dev if appropriate or drop: DONE
[dmitrij.ledkov] Drop xiphos or remove xulrunner dependency: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Evaluate mozplugger xulrunner dependency, remove this or drop from the archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Port chmsee to webkit or drop from archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Make dehydra use libmozjs: DONE
[mozillateam] Switch lightspark to firefox-dev or drop from archive: DONE
[mozillateam] Switch gnome-chemistry-utils to firefox-dev: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Port gxine to mozjs185: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Port mongodb to mozjs185: DONE
[ricotz] Port gjs to mozjs185 (patch in gnome 646369): DONE
[chrisccoulson] Remove xulrunner build dep from pcmanx-gtk2: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop sugar-hulahop: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Convert gecko-mediaplayer to NPAPI (drop use of nsIPrefService) and build-dep on firefox-dev: DONE
[micahg] Remove xulrunner build dep from virt-viewer: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop moz-gnome-pm from the archive (will put it on a.m.o when I have time to maintain it): DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop edbrowse from the archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop fennec from the archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop xulrunner-2.0 from the archive: DONE
[chrisccoulson] Drop xulrunner-1.9.2 from the archive: DONE

pitti, 2011-04-27: added postponed WIs from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/packageselection-desktop-n-firefox-4
micahg: 2011-04-27: sugar-firefox-activity confirmed as working w/FF4, google-gadgets was dropped from the archive
micahg: 2011-05-18: gcu-plugin isn't pure NPAPI, but the API it uses seems to have been stable over at least the past 2 years
chrisccoulson: 2011-05-19: Note that all binary interfaces are unfrozen now, so interfaces which might have been stable previously have no guarantees at all in the future. We should kill gcu-plugin if it's using any Mozilla-specific binary interfaces
micahg: 2011-05-23: gmusicbrowser only has a suggests on libgtk2-mozembed-perl, so no need to drop, we can just not satisfy the suggests (it wasn't satisfied in natty and it's the default music player in Xubuntu, so can't be that important :))
micahg: 2011-05-28: Debian actually removed the mozilla plugin from virt-viewer so we don't need a diff :)

chrisccoulson, 2011-06-07, screenlets port to webkit - https://code.launchpad.net/~chrisccoulson/screenlets/webkit-port/+merge/63787
chrisccoulson, 2011-06-07, listen only has an alternative dependency on python-gtkmozembed. The primary dependency is python-webkit, so we don't need to do anything there

chrisccoulson, 2011-06-09 - Supporting binary extensions (mozvoikko, lightning, enigmail):
- We don't really have much choice here, despite the fact that we try to keep the number of extensions to a minimum. We know lightning and enigmail are popular, and we get bug reports fairly quickly if mozvoikko breaks. Soooo....
1) mozvoikko looks pretty unmaintained upstream, but it's also not a lot of code. I will probably look at reimplementing this in js-ctypes (it's not urgent as long as we can keep the binary version working). If I can get that working, then I will see if the voikko developers are interested in using it
2) I think we can support lightning and enigmail by ensuring that we always have a version which works with the current thunderbird beta. This will ensure we have a 6 week window in which we can make sure that they work. We will update the thunderbird-next PPA with new builds of lightning and enigmail at the start of every beta cycle. If this gets tight, we should consider providing nightly builds against the trunk version of Thunderbird, so we can spot problems earlier (but this should be a last resort. Nightly builds take up enough time already)

chrisccoulson, 2011-06-10 - lernid MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~chrisccoulson/lernid/no-mozembed/+merge/64106

chrisccoulson, 2011-06-13 - mozplugger has an alternate dependency on xulrunner. No change needed

chrisccoulson, 2011-06-10 - moon is blocked because it won't build (bug #798941). However, I've disabled the firefox support, moved the curl bridge from moonlight-plugin-chromium to moonlight-plugin-core, and dropped the xulrunner build-dep (works in natty)

(?)

Work Items