F37 Change Proposal: Firefox Langpacks Subpackage (System-Wide Change)

[Vipul Siddharth]

This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes
process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive
community feedback. This
proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora
Engineering Steering Committee.

== Summary ==
Firefox langpacks, which have been bundled in the Fedora firefox base
package until now, will be moved to a firefox-langpacks subpackage.

== Owner ==

* Name: [[User:Petersen| Jens Petersen]]
* Email: 
* Name: [[User:Stransky| Martin Stransky]]
* Email:

== Detailed Description ==

The firefox packages carries many langpacks containing translations
and other localization data for different countries and languages.
This Change will move them to a separate subpackage pulled in as a
weak dependency by the base package.

== Feedback ==

Initial discussion: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2035178

== Benefit to Fedora ==

This makes Fedora a little more modular: going forward it will be
possible to install firefox without having to have all the langpacks
installed too.

== Scope ==

* Proposal owners:
** Update Rawhide firefox to add the langpacks subpackage
([https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/firefox/pull-request/43 PR])

* Other developers: none

* Release engineering: [https://pagure.io/releng/issue/10858 #10858]

* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==

When upgrading to Fedora 37, firefox's new weak dependency will pull
in the firefox-langpacks subpackage,
so users should not experience any change by default.

== How To Test ==

* install firefox and check that firefox-langpacks gets pulled in
* test that firefox's langpacks are functioning normally
* test upgrade from F36 to F37 and ensure that the firefox-langpacks
subpackage gets installed.

== User Experience ==

Users will have a new firefox-langpacks subpackage installed by default.
If they don't require localization they can remove it and benefit from
lighter firefox updates
and save about 50MB of diskspace.

== Dependencies ==

None

== Contingency Plan ==

* Contingency mechanism: proposal owners will revert firefox.spec to
not subpackage langpacks
* Contingency deadline: before final freeze
* Blocks release? No

== Documentation ==

None

== Release Notes ==

Firefox's langpacks have been moved to a subpackage for greater
install flexibility.

[Vitaly Zaitsev]

On 29/06/2022 19:00, Vipul Siddharth wrote:
> Firefox langpacks, which have been bundled in the Fedora firefox base
> package until now, will be moved to a firefox-langpacks subpackage.

+1. It might be better to split it even more: firefox-langpack-%{lang} 
and depend on the system-wide language (just like spelling dictionaries).

Users will be able to install only the required locales.

[Panu Matilainen]

On 6/29/22 21:26, Vitaly Zaitsev via devel wrote:
> On 29/06/2022 19:00, Vipul Siddharth wrote:
> > Firefox langpacks, which have been bundled in the Fedora firefox base
> > package until now, will be moved to a firefox-langpacks subpackage.
>
> +1. It might be better to split it even more: firefox-langpack-%{lang} 
> and depend on the system-wide language (just like spelling dictionaries).
>
> Users will be able to install only the required locales.

Indeed.

There's some variance in how packages handle this but AIUI the preferred 
scheme is per-language subpackages named <app>-langpack-<lang>.

For an example: 
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/tesseract-tessdata/blob/rawhide/f/tessera...

- Panu -

[Jens-Ulrik Petersen]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 2:27 AM Vitaly Zaitsev via devel <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 29/06/2022 19:00, Vipul Siddharth wrote:
> > Firefox langpacks, which have been bundled in the Fedora firefox base
> > package until now, will be moved to a firefox-langpacks subpackage.
>
> +1. It might be better to split it even more: firefox-langpack-%{lang}
> and depend on the system-wide language (just like spelling dictionaries).
>
> Users will be able to install only the required locales.

Right, I am aware of that.

One problem is that the number of firefox langpacks changes somewhat over
releases,
so Martin was hesitant to take this approach in the past.  Probably still
applies.
So the proposed approach seems like a reasonable compromise and step
forward.

(I have pondered if we could decide on a set of core firefox langpacks
which are "guaranteed" to exist
and so hopefully could be safely subpackaged - but this makes the handling
more complicated
and delicate - it would have to be done very carefully in langpacks.)

Jens

[przemek klosowski]

How about a middle ground, by splitting langpacks into several larger 
groups (roman-alphabet+arabic&persian+far-eastern?, asian+european?). 
This way we wouldn't have to constantly twiddle with new packages and 
keep the number of packages sane.

p

On 6/30/22 06:32, Jens-Ulrik Petersen wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 2:27 AM Vitaly Zaitsev via devel 
>  wrote:
> On 29/06/2022 19:00, Vipul Siddharth wrote:
> > Firefox langpacks, which have been bundled in the Fedora firefox
> base
> > package until now, will be moved to a firefox-langpacks subpackage.
>
> +1. It might be better to split it even more:
> firefox-langpack-%{lang}
> and depend on the system-wide language (just like spelling
> dictionaries).
>
> Users will be able to install only the required locales.
>
>
> Right, I am aware of that.
>
> One problem is that the number of firefox langpacks changes somewhat 
> over releases,
> so Martin was hesitant to take this approach in the past.  Probably 
> still applies.
> So the proposed approach seems like a reasonable compromise and step 
> forward.
>
> (I have pondered if we could decide on a set of core firefox langpacks 
> which are "guaranteed" to exist
> and so hopefully could be safely subpackaged - but this makes the 
> handling more complicated
> and delicate - it would have to be done very carefully in langpacks.)
>
> Jens
>
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