Updating thunderbird from 68 to 78 in focal

[Robie Basak]

Thanks Marc! I think this is resolved then? Comments inline, and one
request at the bottom.

On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 09:13:38AM -0500, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
> 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.

That perfectly answers my questions. Thanks!

On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 03:37:48PM +0100, Olivier Tilloy wrote:
> That's right, but the enigmail maintainer released an update that is
> compatible with thunderbird 78 and shows a wizard on first run after
> the update to import settings and keys into thunderbird's built-in PGP
> support.
> This is enigmail 2:2.2.4-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 currently in focal-proposed,
> and it goes hand-in-hand with the thunderbird update.

Excellent. Thank you!

I have just one request, which to be clear is new and open to
discussion, not a mandate.

I've seen various changes we've made deliberately over the years cause a
great deal of confusion in the Ubuntu support community, but I haven't
been able to link to a single straightforward explanation. Usually, I
think if our rationale were known, our users would be able to work with
our changes better.

So can we have a single authoritative explanation somewhere please, that
explains what we're doing, why we're doing it, and the downsides of the
trade-off we've chosen to accept? In this case, I suppose the downsides
are some user disruption for former Enigmail users, and the removal of
the two plugins - but we're doing it for good reason.

I don't have a strong opinion on where we should document this (whether
for example it's in a mailing list, a blog post, the wiki, a long bug
comment or a Discourse post) - just as long as it's documented somewhere
that can be linked to.

I appreciate this mailing list and the bug might serve as a record that
explains everything, but I think it's hard for others to dig through to
find what actually happened amongst all the noise - hence my request
specifically for a summary somewhere that can easily be linked to.

This is something I propose that we start doing for _any_ significant
user-disrupting change.

Robie
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