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Re: Using the same nss upstream version in all suites?



On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 01:13:19PM +0100, Guido Günther wrote:
> Hi release team,
> on the LTS list we discussed if it would be feasible to have the same
> nspr/nss[1] upstream version in all suites (nameley testing, stable,
> oldstable, oldoldstable). There are several reasons for this:
> 
>   * Doing so would reduce the number of embedded code copies in
>     icedove/iceweasel/chromium/.... They currently become necessary at
>     one point once the version shipped in stable becomes too old.
> 
>   * NSS receives frequent security updates that currently requires
>     backporting the patches to very different versions
> 
>   * Backporting NSS patches becomes much harder over the years so
>     introducing a new version might become less risky than doing the
>     backport.
> 
>   * NSS/NSPR have strict ABI policies[2] to not break backward
>     compatibility.
> 
>   * Security bugs are often restricted on the mozilla bug tracker for
>     a long time so we know there _is_ a bug but might not know what it
>     is until the bug is publicaly accessible.
> 
>   * We would have the same crypto policies for programs linked against
>     nss in all suites.
> 
> As a first step we discussed if it would be possible to introduce the
> new nspr/nss versions via stable point releases. This would allow us to
> ask for testing via the proposed-updates repo while still being able to
> fix any regressions via a DSA. Backporting would become simpler since
> the same backporting would happen for stable/oldstable and oldoldstable
> and the diff to the new upstream version is minimal.
> 
> In order to improve confidence in nss upstream releases we enable the
> test suite during the build and added some basic autopkg tests[3,4].
> 
> Would it be o.k. for the release team to handle new nss/nspr versions
> via stable point releases?

Now that squeeze moves out of support would it be o.k. to update nss via
p-u for stable and oldstable?

Cheers,
 -- Guido


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