Updating thunderbird from 68 to 78 in focal

[Marc Deslauriers]

On 2021-01-15 4:13 p.m., Olivier Tilloy wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am working on updating thunderbird in focal from version 68 to
> version 78 (78.5.0 is currently in focal-proposed), because upstream
> has ended support for the 68 series (bionic will follow).
> This is a new major version that brings a number of changes, and
> breaks a couple of packages in the archive (jsunit and tinyjsd, see
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1895643/comments/29
> for details). I have consequently marked thunderbird as breaking these
> packages to ensure they are uninstalled on upgrade, and I have started
> a conversation with the SRU team (Robie specifically, who suggested
> this is TB territory) to try and come up with an optimal solution. Are
> there precedents of similar situations?
> Should tinyjsd and jsunit be removed from the focal archive? Should we
> prepare SRUs making them empty (Robie mentioned this was done with
> bitcoin and similar)?
> How do we mitigate and document the breakage?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>  Olivier
> 

Since the packages contain software that is meant to run specifically in firefox
and thunderbird, and the only reverse-depends seems to be enigmail which is now
obsolete, I think it is appropriate to simply SRU empty packages. I assume this
will be done with enigmail too since it is no longer compatible or required with
the newer thunderbird?

While I can't recall the exact details, I'm pretty sure we did something similar
to firefox plugins when we switched to shipping new upstream versions instead of
backporting patches.

As for documenting the breakage...adding a note to the NEWS file in the empty
packages should be sufficient. Do you expect this to actually break something?

If any other member of the tech board disagrees with this, we can add it as a
topic for our next meeting.

Marc.