On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 08:25:59AM -0600, Aaron Toponce wrote: > Seeing as though upstream Firefox 3.6 released December 1, 2008, and > upstream Thunderbird 3.1 released just a couple days ago, it might be > high time to get xulrunner 1.9.2 into Sid, as both Iceweasel 3.6 and > Icedove 3.1 will depend on it. However, I hear there will be lots of > breakage if xulrunner 1.9.2 comes into Sid. If so, what will break? > Further, what can I do to help?
Short answer: not much. Long answer: The target for squeeze was decided to be 3.5/1.9.1 a long time ago, when testing freeze was expected much earlier. Until Thunderbird 3.1, the incentive to keep it that way still made sense. Now, things may have changed, but it's more complicated than it seems. We currently only have one version of xulrunner in the archive for a given suite. Technically speaking, the xulrunner source package provides the xulrunner-1.9.x packages, and obviously a given source package only provides on xulrunner-1.9.x package. At the moment, stable (lenny) has xulrunner-1.9, squeeze and unstable have xulrunner-1.9.1 and experimental has xulrunner-1.9.2. With the upcoming release of the Firefox 4.0 first beta, there might be a xulrunner-2.0 coming in a third party repository. Therea are mainly two reasons for that state of affairs with xulrunner: - it avoids having a part of the suite using a version of xulrunner while another part uses a different one, which would most probably create a big mess. - there is not enough hand power to maintain several versions of xulrunner in the same suite (especially stable) The latter also applies for iceape and icedove, and is why 3.5/1.9.1 is still considered as the release target: iceape 2.0, icedove 3.0, and iceweasel 3.5 are all based on xulrunner/gecko 1.9.1. Security support for stable will be easier if there is only one branch to support for the whole gecko ecosystem. Sure, upstream support for it will be dropped soon, but we can't expect 3.6 to be supported the whole squeeze lifetime either. That being said, there are reasons why 3.6 would be nice to have in squeeze, and the main one is the out of process plugin feature. BUT, there are technical reasons that make that goal difficult to attain. First, TB 3.1 has just been released, and as such hasn't been widely tested in Debian. It usually isn't very wise, that close to the expected freeze time, to upload a new major release of a not exactly small and trivial software. Second, for the reasons given earlier, releasing with iceweasel 3.6 and icedove 3.1 would mean to avoid releasing with iceape 2.0. This may not be a huge problem, as we already didn't release lenny with iceape, but see below. Switching to xulrunner 1.9.2 means making sure all the packages currently built against xulrunner-dev and libmozjs-dev build fine, get the proper dependencies, and then run fine with xulrunner 1.9.2. Unfortunately, as xpcom is guaranteed forward compatible but not backwards compatible, some plugins and extensions, once built against xulrunner 1.9.2, are likely to not work in iceape 2.0 anymore. This would leave iceape users with a bitter aftertaste. Alternatively, iceape-dev could be filled again with the relevant header and library files, such that those plugins and extensions can build against it which would solve the compatibility issue, but then iceape would need to either be released or be left in the same state as in lenny, i.e. only providing the -dev package. That means a lot of work in identifying those plugins and extensions, modifying them, etc. FWIW, as iceape-dev is not used anymore and is a transitional package, I was about to remove it. Switching to xulrunner 1.9.2 would also mean to make sure it works properly on all the target architectures, while currently there are various test suite failures on some architectures. xulrunner 1.9.1 is in a better shape, from that perspective. All in all, I still think releasing squeeze with iceape 2.0, iceweasel 3.5 and icedove 3.0 is the best course of action. Cheers, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100628083406.gd5...@glandium.org
