Firefox ESR package is really needed

[James Henstridge]

On 3 October 2017 at 23:55, Robie Basak <robie.basak at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2017 at 12:27:36AM +0300, Nrbrtx wrote:
>> Thanks to JonathonF - he built latest Firefox ESR 52.4.0. Interested users
>> may download it from PPA
>> https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/firefox-esr
>> <https://launchpad.net/%7Ejonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/firefox-esr> .
>>
>> But this is not user-friendly solution.
>
> Given that others are already doing the work in their PPAs, I wonder if
> any of them would be able to get together and volunteer to maintain
> firefox-esr in Ubuntu's official archive, working alongside the existing
> maintenance of non-ESR Firefox done by the desktop team?
>
> As has already been mentioned by others this might involve some
> additional work to make the two play well in the archive together.
>
> Is there anyone who is prepared to drive this? Presumably there's no
> point in considering how (and if) it might work technically unless we
> have volunteers though.

Another option would be to try and package firefox-esr as a snap.
This would give access to multiple Ubuntu releases with a single
build, and give the ability to push out updates independent of the
Ubuntu release process.  The package would also show up automatically
in gnome-software without the need for the user to add a PPA.

You'd have access to the same Launchpad build infrastructure as you'd
have for a PPA build or one in the main Ubuntu archive, so once things
are set up it should be relatively easy to get builds for multiple
architectures pushed out.

James.