Archive for the 'debian' Category

Beware ! xulrunner 1.9.1 might break some applications like epiphany, galeon, yelp, chmsee, etc.

You have three main options to work around this problem:

• Set the MOZ_GRE_CONF environment variable to /etc/gre.d/1.9.system.conf
• Remove the /etc/gre.d/1.9.1.system.conf file
• Copy the /etc/gre.d/1.9.system.conf file in the ${HOME}/.gre.d directory (which you can create if it doesn't exist, which is very likely)

For the moment, I identified a definite breakage of epiphany.

Depending on what API the applications use, they might break more or less. What happens is that some of the applications depending on xulrunner-1.9, using the XPCOM standalone glue, give a too broad range of versions of xulrunner they claim to be compatible with. The net result is that the glue can end up loading libxul 1.9.1, which may not be totally binary compatible with what the application actually needs.

The problem may or may not happen on your computer, because the XPCOM glue is half broken in its way to find a proper libxul : it stops at the first one if sees that fits in the given range. This means that depending on the order of the files in the /etc/gre.d directory, you can get a different version of libxul.

The workarounds above ensure libxul 1.9 is always loaded.

In my previous posts about the release of Iceweasel 3.5, some people succeeded in installing Iceweasel on Lenny by rebuilding xulrunner-1.9.1 (not without some trouble).

Actually, thanks to the improved dpkg-shlibdeps, it's almost painless to install the packages from testing/experimental. The old days where pulling a package from testing or unstable would pull a new libc6 and a bunch of other packages are long gone (though, as we will see, things could be even better).

So, if you are a Lenny user, are not afraid with a few packages from testing on your system, and want to use Iceweasel 3.5, here are the steps you can go through to install it:

• Add the testing and experimental sources to your apt sources:
  $ echo deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian testing main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/testing.list
$ echo deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian experimental main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list

• Set the default distribution to "stable":
  $ echo 'APT::Default-Release "stable";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/default
• apt-get update
• Install a few dependencies from "testing":
  $ apt-get install -t testing libstartup-notification0 libsqlite3-0 libnss3-1d libhunspell-1.2-0 libasound2
• Install iceweasel:
  $ apt-get install iceweasel/experimental

The latter won't work until xulrunner-1.9.1 reaches experimental (Update: it got there), but the following alternative procedure will do in the meanwhile:

• Tentatively install xulrunner-1.9.1 (provided you downloaded it following the previous instructions):
  $ dpkg -i xulrunner-1.9.1_1.9.1-1_*.deb libmozjs2d_1.9.1-1_*.deb
  You will get dependency problems, ignore them.
• Fix the dependency problems:
  $ apt-get -f install
  This will install all the required packages from Lenny.
• Install iceweasel:
  $ apt-get install iceweasel/experimental

Now, the sad thing about this, is that technically, you shouldn't need to install libstartup-notification0 and libasound2 from testing at all. The same might even apply for libhunspell-1.2-0. The reason is that technically, xulrunner-1.9.1, which has a versioned dependency on these libraries, doesn't actually require the versions it demands, and earlier versions could work as well. The ones from Lenny should be enough.

The reason why this happens is that these libraries don't provide symbols files, which are the basis for the improved dpkg-shlibdeps to make better dependencies, ones that would allow xulrunner-1.9.1 from experimental to work with Lenny's libstartup-notification0, libasound2, and libhunspell-1.2-0.

I just uploaded iceweasel 3.5-1 in experimental. It should reach your mirrors soon, but its main dependency, xulrunner-1.9.1, is still in NEW, so you'll have to take it from my people.debian.org space until is comes out from there.

Some quick links:

• For amd64:
  • libmozjs2d_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb
  • xulrunner-1.9.1_1.9.1-1_amd64.deb
• For i386:
  • libmozjs2d_1.9.1-1_i386.deb
  • xulrunner-1.9.1_1.9.1-1_i386.deb

And until it reaches your nearby mirror, you can take iceweasel from there too:

• For amd64
• For i386

For the people using Lenny, note that you should only need to rebuild xulrunner. The iceweasel package should be installable as is once you have xulrunner 1.9.1 installed.

You will need the following change to configure.in to be able to build xulrunner on Lenny:
- PKG_CHECK_MODULES(SQLITE, sqlite3 >= $SQLITE_VERSION)
+ PKG_CHECK_MODULES(SQLITE, sqlite3)

Then run autoconf.

I might provide backported packages in the near future.

When I said I had to update the copyright file...

$ git diff --stat debian/1.9 debian/1.9.1 debian/copyright
 debian/copyright | 543 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
 1 files changed, 502 insertions(+), 41 deletions(-)
$ wc -l debian/copyright
1259 debian/copyright


Note that many of those lines should probably be added to the copyright file for the current version in unstable...

The release is currently building on my PC and will be uploaded after some testing. Stay tuned.

Iceweasel will probably follow tomorrow.

Note for the ftp-masters reading this: Yes, a bunch of libraries were added to the source, and they are currently used by the packages. This has been done on purpose, for two reasons: lack of time to implement the necessary hacks to use system libraries, and lack of time to investigate the state of the patches against these libraries to avoid iceweasel crashing.

Update: Uploaded. The packages may sit in NEW for a while, so they are already available on my people.debian.org space.

It took less time I expected, but after making xulrunner 1.9.1 pre-release packages available, I'm making iceweasel 3.5 pre-release packages available:

• For amd64
• For i386

As for xulrunner, some more work on these is required before they are ready to be uploaded to the Debian archive.

I'm more than halfway to an upload of xulrunner to experimental, but until I get iceweasel itself built, and xulrunner in an uploadable shape, you can download amd64 and i386 packages of xulrunner-1.9.1 from my p.d.o space. To get something that works, you only need libmozjs2d and xulrunner-1.9.1. Following are direct links to the relevant files:

• For amd64:
  • libmozjs2d_1.9.1-0_amd64.deb
  • xulrunner-1.9.1_1.9.1-0_amd64.deb
• For i386:
  • libmozjs2d_1.9.1-0_i386.deb
  • xulrunner-1.9.1_1.9.1-0_i386.deb

I only tested the amd64 binary, which doesn't have JIT javascript, so if you have particular problems with the i386 binaries, please report them in the comments. You can obviously leave comments for problems with the amd64 binaries, by the way.

Since iceweasel 3.5 is not ready yet, you may still want something to try this xulrunner out. You can try your own monster, for that purpose. The steps involved to create the monster are actually simple:

• Edit the /usr/lib/iceweasel/application.ini file and change the MaxVersion value in the [Gecko] section to 1.9.1
• Replace the /usr/lib/iceweasel/xulrunner symbolic link with a symbolic link to /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1 (ln -sfn ../xulrunner-1.9.1 /usr/lib/iceweasel/xulrunner)

With these changes, running iceweasel will start the monster.

If you still want to have iceweasel running the "normal" version, skip the second step above and start xulrunner-1.9.1 /usr/lib/iceweasel/application.ini instead.

This post has been posted with the following monster:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090629 Iceweasel/3.0.11 (Debian-3.0.11-1)

For those not following or not very much aware of what it means, this is Iceweasel/Firefox 3.0 using the engine from Iceweasel/Firefox 3.5. And except a few components, it seems to work fine. And the demos for Firefox 3.5 from hack.mozilla.org all work as expected.

The xulrunner 1.9.1 package I'm using still needs more polishing before upload, though.

Not only have I not stopped working on WebKit, but I even touched the debian/copyright file :-/

Update: and now I even uploaded a new xulrunner package...

Since I am expected to spend more than half my packaging time updating the debian/copyright file, I am hereby orphaning nspr, nss, iceape and xulrunner. I am also stopping work on webkit and iceweasel, but they don't end up in the orphan state since they are comaintained.

Good luck to my fellow developpers. (And sorry, sincerely)

Update: As I do realize writing while being pissed doesn't help making the motives right, and apparently, some people have seen this as an extortion, let me make things clearer:

I was starting to work on xulrunner 1.9.1 when the discussion about the copyright files came up. It will require a significant amount of time, and while Noah Slater's opinion alone wouldn't really have carried me that far, despite me saying so because I got pissed by his words, 2 messages from Jörg Jaspert (the only ones he posted so far in the thread, by the way) did make it clear that my work on xulrunner 1.9.1 was going to be a waste of time, which I already lack to properly handle the bugs in my maintained packages, let alone keeping the copyright file up-to-date.

As I am obviously unable to handle the amount of work required to maintain big packages, as drawing new blood in the mozilla team has always failed so far, I just prefer to stop than to over-overflow. Call it extortion to get people in the mozilla team if you want, I'm fine with the notion.

I've been thinking to stop working on big packages for nearly a year already, but never mentionned it but to a few people in a few occasions. I couldn't resolve myself to do it, though I did reduce the amount of time I spend on these packages (I was overflown, a year ago). I just found an excuse to actually do it.

I must say I feel awkward now, and I still don't know if I will be able to keep this resolution.

As for the new copyright file format, with full licensing information and copyright holders list, I *did* try, on a significantly smaller piece of software than the mozilla packages, namely on Webkit, which is not really small either but still 6 times less files than xulrunner. I must say I hate to have to list copyright holders and file names with a passion, and the amount of time it takes. It is the main reason why there wasn't more uploads of WebKit svn snapshots in the archive...

Last but not least, thanks for the nice comments.

You may have noticed, or not, but WebKit 1.1.3, which has been released a few days ago, is available in experimental. The great news is that we now have a real maintenance team, because I now have a co-maintainer, who actually did most of the work getting the 1.1.x releases in shape for experimental.

Now, some JavaScript performance figures, as I have been doing for most WebKit releases I uploaded to the archive, with a recap of previous episodes:

• svn 27674: 3932.0ms
• svn 31842: 2612.2ms
• release 1.0.1: 1658.4ms
• release 1.1.3: 1333.2ms

All there tests have obviously been run on the same machine, under the same conditions. The machine in question is my x86-64 laptop, which means all these test are with a x86-64 binary.

This also means the last release, 1.1.3, doesn't take advantage of the Just In Time JavaScript compiler, which is only available on x86 binaries.

With the x86 binaries under a x86 personality chroot, I get under one second:

• release 1.1.3, with JIT, x86: 985.4ms

But, in the last few days, I've been working on getting JIT first to build and then to work on x86-64 linux, and with the help of folks on the webkit-dev list, that just happened. And the result is just... wow.

• release 1.1.3, with JIT, x86-64: 623.0ms

(Note that a few tests are actually slower than on x86)

That's so many times faster than what we had a year ago that it's almost unbelievable.

Expect the next upstream release, planned for some time in the near future, to have my patches applied. In the meanwhile, you can get them here and here.