Re: www/firefox-esr instead of www/firefox[0-9]*

[nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 03:47:35PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> I have come around to treating firefox-ESR as its own upstream.  I am
> sympathetic to the concerns, but have a long history of being troubled
> by renaming, so I'm trying to ask for explanations of what the real
> problems are (the cause for needing profile migration is still unclear)
> to find a way that works for users without unwarranted churn.
> 
> I think we need a concrete plan on the table that addresses the various
> situations, including:
> 
>   what happens when there is a new release called ESR, in terms of
>   updating firefox and firefox-ESR (I sent one earlier - is that the
>   right plan?)
> 
>   what do we do about superceded ESR releases (rename to firefoxNN, if
>   there is a reason to keep it, but in general do not keep?)
> 
>   are we in general not going to keep old things that are non-ESR?  (I
>   am guessing 52 was ESR)  It seems best to have a plan to have the
>   minimal number of extra versions.
> 
> and related:
> 
>   Why are we keeping 60 still, and how do we get rid of superceded ESR
>   versions?

Extended Support Releases are a continuation of some previous mainline
version. Go back in VCS history and pull up the version they're derived
from, and the patches and build machinery might be useful, assuming
everything appplies. www/firefox-esr gets updated to that newest release
blessed as ESR, with that stuff hopefully being helpful for updating it.

The first version of www/firefox68 in-tree was 68.1.0.
The last version of www/firefox with major version 68 was 68.0.1.

When the next version of SeaMonkey is available, it will be based on
Firefox 60 (probably), and the build machinery and patches from 60 might
be useful.  But they can be pulled from the attic.

>but in general do not keep?

Yeah, I don't think we can afford to have too many firefoxes in tree.
Or thunderbirds, for that matter.

There isn't the people to keep them working (never mind safe to use),
and they're extra wasted electricity for the bulk build boxes.

I don't think there will be another 52, unless they really mess up.
The Rust situation will probably get better with time.
I upstreamed some RNG fixes recently!