embedded code copies in iceweasel [was: Re: iceweasel_26.0-1_amd64.changes ACCEPTED into experimental, experimental]

[Mike Hommey]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 04:25:56PM -0500, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> On Sun 2013-12-15 11:01:13 -0500, Debian FTP Masters wrote:
> > Changes: 
> >  iceweasel (26.0-1) experimental; urgency=low
> [...]
> >    * debian/control*, debian/noinstall.in, debian/rules, debian/upstream.mk,
> >      debian/xulrunner-GRE_VERSION.install.in, debian/xulrunner.mozconfig:
> >      Don't build against system nspr, nss and sqlite3 when building backports.
> 
> The other alternative to this approach is to explicitly backport the
> needed versions of nspr, nss, and sqlite3, right?  These packages are
> potentially useful to other backports.  I would love to have a modern
> version of nss available in debian-backports as its own package.
> 
> To be clear, this has already bitten me for a client that was relying on
> private patches against the backported nss package (from
> backports.debian.net) while using iceweasel while working from debian
> wheezy in general.  When iceweasel 26 was released, they lost use of
> their patches to nss (despite it being installed).

NSS in debian is more than iceweasel. Newer Iceweasel can't use older
NSS. And newer NSS can break other software.

Likewise for sqlite.

IOW, I'm not going to change this for the official backports. You can
however backport nss independently and use dpkg-divert to "remove" the
nss copy from the xulrunner directory.

> >    * debian/control*, debian/xulrunner.mozconfig.in: Build with the in-tree
> >      cairo. I think it's time to admit that there are too many issues with
> >      system cairo.
> [...]
> 
> I'm a little worried about this change too.  If there are bugs with
> system cairo, shouldn't we be getting them fixed in system cairo?  this
> approach seems to leave all other cairo-dependent projects in debian
> vulnerable to whatever these issues are.
> 
> I can understand the temptation to make this changes (it seems easier
> From the perspective of packaging iceweasel itself), but it looks to me
> like they represent a setback for debian as a whole.  I recommend trying
> to split the packages back out if possible.

There are two problems with cairo. The first is that its maintainer(s)
are apparently not interested in fixing these issues. There are bugs
with patches against cairo that have been waiting for years. The second
problem is that the in-tree version of cairo is now older than the system
version, which now likely makes things harder. Also note that those
issues have, for most of them, never surfaced on anything else than
iceweasel.

With that being said, cairo is on its way out of iceweasel, it will go
away during 2014, well before jessie is released.

Mike.