Firefox 1.5 Backport

[jdong]

Today's the big day for Firefox, so I wanna address this before I get flooded with requests for it:

ONE LINE SUMMARY:
It's going to be a while before Firefox 1.5 is officially backported.

RATIONALE
Firefox 1.5 marks a major change in Firefox relative to the 1.0.x series. Backporting this big a change has never been done in Backports history, and as a result the migration needs to be treated with care... The new Firefox package threatens compatibility with existing components, from the Ubuntu-bundled Totem plugins to user installed extensions and system locale packages. In addition, how security updates to the Firefox 1.5 series needs to be addresses, as it seems like the Ubuntu security team will try their best to avoid backporting 1.5 themselves (IMO a very good decision for stability/compatibility reasons).



The backporting of Firefox needs to be done in stages. First off, there will be NO EXPERIMENTAL PACKAGES released before 1.5 final is in Dapper.

After that, there will be a rough closed-door experimentation time by Backports team members to make sure the Dapper packages do not break any system too extensively.

Third, the Backports team will release experimental packages for early adopters and testers once the Dapper packages are confirmed not to be too dangerous...

Finally, if all goes well, Firefox 1.5 will be filed to James Troup for backporting


This thread is locked and only updated by me periodically to keep you guys informed on our process. You can subscribe to this thread if you're really obsessive-compulsive about it...



FINAL FINAL FINAL UPDATE:

A backport will not be done for Firefox 1.5 because of compatibility issues with introducing a new browser, both to the rest of the Ubuntu Breezy platform and to users with heavily customized Firefox setups.

Those who wish to use Firefox 1.5 are encouraged to download official binaries from mozilla.com and unpack them into their home directories -- a very simple, pure graphical process.

[GothicX]

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o....5/linux-i686/

It's already there =)

[jdong]

Please read the post before replying... I said that there will be nothing until it is in DAPPER.

[akurashy]

Good luck backporting it (to the team )

[yaztromo]

Gah! Windows users get all the fun first

[jdong]

UPDATE 1: 1.5 released today, identical to rc3.

1.5RC3 Dapper packages still not perfectly stable, and also currently evaluating exactly what packages I need to recompile...


UPDATE 2: Prelim list
UPDATE 3: Final list of source package depending on Firefox:

jdong@shuttle:~$ (apt-cache rdepends firefox && apt-cache rdepends mozilla-firefox) | sed 's/ //g;s/^|//g;' | sort | grep -v "^ReverseDepends" | sort | uniq | xargs apt-cache showsrc | grep "^Package" | sed 's/Package: //g' | sort | uniq | grep -v "buntu-meta$"
bookmarkbridge
checky
ctxextensions
devhelp
dhelp
diggler
djvulibre
dpkg-www
endeavour
epiphany-browser
epydoc
firefox
flashplugin-nonfree
galeon
gecko-sharp
gecko-sharp2
gnome-app-install
j2se1.4-amd64
j2se1.4-i586
librsvg2
liferea
livehttpheaders
meta-j2re1.4-mozilla
mozilla-bonobo
mozilla-firefox-locale-all
mozilla-firefox-locale-ar
mozilla-firefox-locale-ca
mozilla-firefox-locale-el
mozilla-firefox-locale-eu
mozilla-firefox-locale-it
mozilla-firefox-locale-ja
mozilla-firefox-locale-ko
mozilla-firefox-locale-nb
mozilla-firefox-locale-tr
mozilla-firefox-locale-uk
mozilla-mozgest
mozilla-stumbleupon
mozilla-thunderbird
mozplugger
mplayerplug-in
nip2
nukeimage
nvu
openoffice.org2
openoffice.org2-amd64
tabextensions
venkman
vlc
wysihtml
xfig
yelp

51 source packages in total.
Most likely all of these need to be rebuilt to say the least, if they're compatible with 1.5 at the source level at all... I'm hoping people are seeing why backporting Firefox 1.5 is going to be such a major job

[dradul]

Is it not the policy of the security team to provide the latest Firefox versions as security updates? Remeber the horrid conflicts between Hoary security and backports repositories with Firefox 1.07 some months back...

[jdong]

Originally Posted by dradul Is it not the policy of the security team to provide the latest Firefox versions as security updates? Remeber the horrid conflicts between Horay security and backports repositories with Firefox 1.07 some months back...

OMG don't remind me

Security team established a long solid record of backporting changes without incrementing version number (even if the packages were source level equivalent to later upstream version) for nearly 9 months, and all of a sudden one day decided to issue a bumped version starting with Firefox 1.0.6.

That's why this time we're taking it slowly. I've asked devs several times about Security Team's plans for security updates to Firefox for the rest of Breezy's security support cycle, and have yet to receive official word, though peers tell me that they will fight importing 1.5 to breezy-security to the death basically...

That'll be something decided between phase 2 and 3.

[zero0w]

I am also interested in a Firefox 1.5 backport for Ubuntu Breezy, now that the official 1.5 version is out.

Will we see an official backport of this important updates used by thousands of web surfers using Ubuntu Linux?

[zero0w]

Thanks for the care and attention to detail on taking this backport project.
Keep up the good work.