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On Feb 21st, Sunday, the Gentoo Mozilla Team had an informal meeting |
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to discuss some of the recent changes which have a large-ish impact on |
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users. Below is a list of them and the decisions that were taken. |
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After the list is a description of each decision. |
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|
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-> SQLite with Firefox: Firefox will use the bundled sqlite by |
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default. Users can select the system-wide sqlite by setting |
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USE=system-sqlite. |
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|
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-> Ebuilds for Extensions in-tree: The Gentoo Mozilla team will not |
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ship ebuilds for extensions such as noscript and weave anymore. We |
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will only have ebuilds for extensions which are linux-specific and |
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compiled; such as enigmail. |
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|
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-> Firefox and Thunderbird Alphas and Betas: In addition to the |
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overlay, we are going to start placing alphas and betas of Firefox and |
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Thunderbird in the tree with a package.mask and a big fat ewarn during |
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installation. Adventurous users are encouraged try them out but report |
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bugs only in the Gentoo bugzilla. Do not go to upstream unless we ask |
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you. |
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|
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NOTE: These ebuilds will not have language packs since upstream does |
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not release packs for these. |
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|
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-> NSS/NSPR Changes: This involves various cleanups to the ebuild, and |
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moving of the libraries from ${libdir}/{nss/nspr} to ${libdir} and |
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removal of the /etc/env.d/08{nss,nspr} LDPATH entries alongwith |
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corresponding changes in firefox-bin and thunderbird-bin launchers. |
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These changes should be completely transparent to the user. |
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|
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-> Revival of #gentoo-mozilla @ FreeNode: The mozilla team has |
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expanded in recent times, and with that we have decided to revive the |
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ages-old #gentoo-mozilla irc channel. Users are welcome to idle, |
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discuss, and ask for help on that channel. Come on over! |
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|
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========================= |
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Why we made these decisions: |
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========================= |
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|
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NOTE: These are very link-heavy, so you might want to view them in |
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html at: http://bheekly.blogspot.com/2010/02/gentoo-mozilla-team-meeting-decisions.html |
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|
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==== |
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SQLite with Firefox: We've done flip-flops on using the |
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system-installed sqlite for for XULRunner and Firefox. Initially, we |
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used the internal one, but folks reported bugs[1][2][3] about that (we |
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prefer not to use bundled libraries), so we switched to the system |
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sqlite. |
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|
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Then with the next version of Firefox, people started reporting major |
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bugs[4][5] with using the system sqlite and we temporarily disabled |
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it. Once the problems were resolved, we added USE=+sqlite to use the |
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system-installed sqlite by default. |
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|
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Recently, another issue cropped up: upstream mozilla was getting bug |
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reports that the sqlite db was insecure, and trivial tools like grep |
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could be used to get (private) deleted information from it. They |
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traced that to distros using the system sqlite which didn't have |
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support for SQLITE_SECURE_DELETE. They then made that a mandatory |
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configure check with 3.6 (and we added a dep on the system sqlite for |
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it). Soon, we started getting bug reports[6] from people who did not |
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want that enabled system-wide (since it zeroes out the data when |
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deleting it, which has a performance penalty). Upstream made it clear |
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that they would not make the check optional[7]. |
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|
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In the end, we decided to make firefox use the internal sqlite by |
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default, and allow the user to select the system installed sqlite via |
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USE=sytem-sqlite if they are ok with secure-delete being on |
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system-wide. |
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|
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==== |
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Ebuilds for Extensions in-tree: We found that a number of extensions |
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were being released at a very swift rate which meant two things: |
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|
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1. Bumping ebuilds was very tedious, which led to them becoming |
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stale very quickly[8][9] |
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2. Judging whether an ebuild can go stable was not possible, and |
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most often the extension developers just want the users to use the |
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latest release. |
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|
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This offset the benefit of users being able to install extensions |
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system-wide and have it managed by portage. Users can still manually |
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install and manage system-wide extensions if they so wish. They are |
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also free to copy the old ebuilds to their local overlays and use them |
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if they wish. |
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|
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==== |
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Firefox and Thunderbird Alphas and Betas: Mozilla Upstream has been |
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complaining that their betas and release candidates don't get much |
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testing on Linux since all the distros ship only the final releases. |
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This means that bugs are caught very late, and aren't fixed till the |
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next major version. To help with this, we've decided to revise our |
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release strategy and give a bit more visibility to our alphas and |
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betas (which are generally kept in the overlay[10]) by pushing them to |
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the tree under package.mask, and with large ewarns all over the place. |
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Users are strongly advised NOT to report bugs with these directly to |
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upstream. Please use the Gentoo Bugzilla. |
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|
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==== |
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NSS/NSPR Changes: the libraries for nss and nspr were installed in a |
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prefix due to collisions with other packages (libssl.a for instance). |
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Recently, Google decided to use portage for cross-compiling and |
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managing ChromeOS. This combined with some bugs reported[11][12] with |
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NSS/NSPR led to some investigation, and a voluntary review[13][14] of |
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the ebuilds by the nice folks at Google. |
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|
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This led to a number of changes which included disabling static |
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libraries for NSS and NSPR, and moving the rest to ${libdir}. Further |
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details on the changes and their "why" are listed on the review bugs |
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linked above. |
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|
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==== |
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1. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=228637 |
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2. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258462 |
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3. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303028 |
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4. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281695 |
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5. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=283083 |
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6. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304913 |
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7. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=546162 |
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8. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297214 |
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9. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=295252 |
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10. http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/mozilla.git |
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11. http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=32081 |
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12. https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302807 |
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13. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545037 |
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14. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545036 |
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|
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-- |
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~Nirbheek Chauhan |
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|
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Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team |