Firefox 1.0.x sunset announcement and Breezy

[James "Doc" Livingston]

On Tue, 2006-04-18 at 11:06 +1000, Alexander Jacob Tsykin wrote:
> Second, you are missing something obvious. All applications 
> which depend on firefox would have to be recompiled if firefox were to be 
> upgraded to 1.5. Also all packages which depend on any other package compiled 
> from the firefox source code. This is a massive endeavour.

As well as being a massive endeavour it doesn't solve the problem
entirely: what about packages made by third parties?


In theory, this is one of the things XULRunner (libgecko) would help to
solve. How it could work[0] is that Dapper+1 ships with XULRunner 1.9,
and Firefox, Epiphany, Liferea, et al all link against it. When support
is discontinued, a parallel-installable package of XULRunner 1.10 is
created, and then the packages can be updated to build against that.

As both versions of XULRunner could be installed at once, the packages
don't have to be updated all at once. Firefox could be done first, then
the other Main packages, and possibly Universe. This would spread the
work out over a longer timescale, so it isn't quite as impossible.

It also means that third-party stuff wouldn't break, as they can still
depend on the older version of XULRunner that orignally shipped with the
distro.


My 2c,
    James "Doc" Livingston


[0] I'm not sure if it actually does work this way. Version numbers
pulled out of my arse.

-- 
"The problem is that he appears to be one of those who is immortal by
reason of being too stupid to realize that he's been killed."
    -- J. Clarke