Firefox on Fedora: No longer funny

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Sonntag, den 09.10.2011, 11:34 +0200 schrieb drago01:
> On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Christoph Wickert
> <christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Since Mozilla switched to the new rapid release model, Firefox in Fedora
> > is no longer fun: Every 6 weeks a new major version hits our stable
> > release and breaks Firefox horribly:
> >      * My favorite extensions (and actually the only thing that keeps
> >        me using FF) stop working. In the last 7 weeks I had to pitch in
> >        three times and update packages to get things working again.
> >        Sometimes there is not even an update available upstream.
> 
> Which extensions are you talking about? The ones I use never caused an
> such issues.

For example mozilla-adblockplus or chatzilla, also German language packs
or dictionaries.

> >      * Firefox falls back to English as there is no language pack
> >        provided. I have to go go the FTP server and download and
> >        install the XPI file manually.
> 
> Something is broken on your system.
> rpm -qV firefox should tell you that.

rpm's verify gives no output, so everything is ok. Even if I create a
new firefox profile I have the same problem.

> > So what can we do to improve the situation?
> >     1. Can we bring back the language packs as part of the packages?
> 
> They are already there.

Indeed, they are there, but stopped working at some point. At least for
me.

> >     2. Can the FF maintainers make sure that all maintainers of
> >        extensions get notified of changes *before* release of a new
> >        package?
> 
> Which maintainers are you talking about? Packaged extensions or
> upstream extension maintainers?

Packaged extensions of course, notifying upstream doesn't make much
sense.

> >     3. Can someone (I'm looking at you, QA) make sure all extensions
> >        are still compatible?
> 
> That's already one of the test cases but you can't expect people to
> test every extension in the world.

No, but the packaged ones. It is the FF maintainers duty to notify
extension maintainers in advance [1]. If they are proven packagers they
could also fix the extensions themselves. If not they should apply for
co-maintainership.

Regards,
Christoph

[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_maintainer_responsibilities#Notify_others_of_changes_that_may_affect_their_packages