On Sun, Jan 05, 2014 at 02:47:39AM -0800, Vincent Cheng wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Package: mozjs17
> > Severity: serious
> >
> > This package forks a local copy of the Iceweasel Javascript engine which is
> > no longer supported with security updates (currently only the ESR24 series
> > is maintained)
>
> Out of curiosity, why is this a RC bug when there seems to be no
> issues from the security team with regards to src:mozjs (which is even
> older, based on Firefox 4 code AFAIU, and is currently in stable)?
I hadn't notice it so far. That is even worse since it even up in a stable
release!
Will file a bug soon, thanks for point this out.
> > Why do we need a copy of the old version anyway? What are the expected
> > applications
> > using it and why can't they be migrated to the mozjs provided by the
> > iceweasel
> source package.
>
> The following packages are currently depending against libmozjs185-1.0:
> 0ad
> cinnamon
> couchdb
> dehydra
> gnome-shell
> libgjs0b
> libgjs0c
> libmozjs185-dev
> libpeas-1.0-0
> mediatomb-common
> oolite
> policykit-1
>
> (taken from mozjs17's ITP bug report, #709434)
>
> GNOME Shell stands out in that list above as a major package that
> depends on mozjs/Spidermonkey. I myself am maintainer for 0ad, hence
> why I'm interested in this bug report as well.
>
> My understanding is that Spidermonkey, as a standalone release
> (snapshot?) of FF's javascript engine, is meant to be embedded in
> applications that use it. I can't answer for all the packages above,
> but I know that 0ad requires a very specific version of Spidermonkey,
> and that transitioning between different releases seems to be rather
> painful for upstream.
>
> I guess one possible way to deal with this is to dump mozjs and
> mozjs17 (and future Spidermonkey releases) in the same category as
> webkit, i.e. unsupported by the security team?
We can do that, but only as a matter of last resort. For practical
purposes this will leave an endless amount of spidermonkey copies around.
I can see the point for 0ad, but there needs to be some effort by
apps to migrate to a proper supported version.
Cheers,
Moritz
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