Re: Common handling of browser plugins?
On Mon, Sep 18, 2006, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> - flashplugin-nonfree
> - totem-mozilla
> - java-gjc-compat-plugin
> (1) As you can see, each of these packages follows a different naming
> pattern which makes it difficult for the user to find the browser plugin
> of his needs. I suggest to introduce a suffix which will be added to the
> package name and makes clear that it contains a plugin. My suggestions
> are 'foo-mozilla' or even better 'foo-browserplugin'.
Sure, that's an interesting point. We discussed this in #gnome-debian
when the totem-mozilla plugin was introduced. It was hard to find a
good name because the plugin works in firefox, mozilla, xulrunner, and
seamonkey based browsers. Mozilla seemed a good name as being the
distributor of all these sources. Xulrunner also sounded good, since
it's used to build totem, but it would sound strange for people using
firefox or even for ubuntu which probably continues buidling against
firefox-dev.
You might also encounter conflicting policies: e.g. what if the plugin
is written in Java? Does it need to follow the mozilla plugin naming
policy of the java one?
> (2) Another fact that disturbes my is that all of these packages contain
> different plugin directories for the different browsers in Debian.
> These are:
> flashplugin-nonfree: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
> /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins
> /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
mozilla-firefox sounds obsolete and duplicated.
> totem-mozilla: /usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins
> /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
> /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
Upstream told me once that installing in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins would
be enough, but it's not: I think firefox only loads plugins from it's
plugins dir. Xulrunner based browsers will obviously only load plugins
searched by the libxul library, so /usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins I
suppose. Mozilla is for the aging mozilla-browser, soon to be removed.
It seems correct to me.
> java-gjc-compat-plugin: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
> /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins
> /usr/lib/mozilla-snapshot/plugins
mozilla-firefox should be firefox, mozilla-snapshot is probably
obsolete as the package was removed.
> In the totem-mozilla package, all linking is done before packaging, so
> all the directories already contain the plugin.
Yes, the plugin is below /usr/lib/totem, and regular symlinks are
shipped in the .deb.
> (3) Another thing in which all those packages differ is the
> recommendation and suggestion of compatible browsers:
> flashplugin-nonfree suggests: mozilla-browser (>= 2:1.1) |
> mozilla-firefox | firefox
mozilla-firefox is probably obsolete, and this doesn't permit e.g.
xulrunner based browsers (such as epiphany, galeon...).
> totem-mozilla recommends: epiphany-browser | www-browser
Sadly, there's no "mozilla-browser" provides. There's www-browser, and
gnome-www-browser. I suppose we should aim at x-www-browser as well.
Perhaps a provide expressing "mozilla-pluginaware-browser" would be
nice?
Thanks for looking into this, it would be nice if this could result in
some lintian warnings and / or bug reports if there's consensus on
these.
Bye,
--
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>
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