Suggestion: flash-npapi-plugin

[Eric Dorland]

[+pkg-mozilla-maintainers]

* Edward Welbourne (eddy at opera.com) wrote:
> Hi various debian package maintainers,
> 
> I handle the technical issues of packaging for the Opera browser.
> I've lately been reviewing what we Suggest for debian.
> 
> Since there is no virtual package for flash plugins, it's necessary to
> list all, which is both tedious for browser package maintainers and
> unfair to plugin package maintainers; if I miss someone out, that
> would have worked, there's no way for them to mark their package as
> being suitable to the task; and my users won't know about it as an
> option for meeting their needs.
> 
> There are some plugins that are specific to one browser, or family;
> but support for NPAPI is widespread enough that plugins which support
> it could sensibly advertise themselves to browsers that support it via
> a virtual package.  It would thus make sense to have *-npapi-plugin
> virtual packages (or, indeed, simply *-npapi, since NPAPI is a plugin
> API) that each NPAPI-compatible *-plugin (for * = flash, pdf, ...)
> could Provide and each browser could Suggest, thereby making
> everyone's lives easier.
> 
> This would be analogous to the existing virtual package www-browser,
> which any plugin can simply Suggest, rather than having to maintain an
> up-to-date list of known browsers.  There might be some value in
> specifying a separate www-npapi-browser, but any NPAPI-compatibility
> plugin for a browser that doesn't do NPAPI itself would suffice to
> blurr that distinction into oblivion.
> 
> However, I'm not familiar enough with Debian's process for deciding
> what virtual packages should exist, or for creating them.  Does a
> flash-npapi-plugin virtual package sound a worthwhile idea to you,
> variously ?  What would I need to do to get it put into effect ?

Hi Eddy,

The process is documented here:

http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt

I'm not sure it's worth all the trouble just to implement this for a
Suggests, but don't let me stop you :)

-- 
Eric Dorland <eric at kuroneko.ca>
ICQ: #61138586, Jabber: hooty at jabber.com
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