Pale Moon for Linux Ubuntu PPA

[C1xLb]

Blech. That's so 2000s.

Yeah, getting a PPA going would be cool, but time being what it is and the fact that I don't know if launchpad can build Pale Moon as is from source. I suspect it can but I don't know what's needed over and above the info at http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Creating_a_Ubuntu_PPA_package

[Moonchild]

As far as I know, launchpad is able to build Pale Moon without too much trouble. If you want to become an official maintainer of the PPA build then that's cool with me, but as said run your PPA build config by me before you brand it as official, so we can agree on yay or nay

[stevenpusser]

OK, sorry that I didn't understand the trademark license. Could you check the configuration in the debian.tar.xz tarball as set in the debian/patches/mozconfig.patch file and see if it's right, and give official approval if possible?

We create the orig.tar.xz file by extracting the 7z source archive, running the chmod command to fix the permissions, then recompressing it to a Debian-compatible tarball format. Does something else have to be done to get the status bar working?

The files are in this repository for now, we'll purge them if we can't get approval: http://main.mepis-deb.org/mx/repo/pool/main/p/palemoon/

[Moonchild]

Looks good to me!

You may want to update the copyright file which has an old copy of the redist license in it (Nov 2014)

I'm fine with this PPA You have my blessing to build it this way.

Some suggestions:
On newer (3.*+) Linux kernels, do not use --enable-jemalloc. For the future, v26 and later should not be built with jemalloc regardless of target kernel.
Also, some GCC versions produce unstable binaries with -O3; please use -O2 to be on the safe side.

I'll add you as maintainer on the website that you can point people of launchpad to if there is a question. Please let me know the definitive PPA URL to use.

[stevenpusser]

Thanks! Actually, those package builds are done on a Debian Wheezy and Jessie base on our volunteer's home machines for MEPIS 12 and MX 15 Linux, then uploaded to our own servers, not on a remote Launchpad build farm as it would be for an Ubuntu PPA. Our source files can be reused for a PPA build, the resulting packages are not meant to be interchangeable between Debian and Ubuntu. I basically reused the old PPA source files as a template for the more recent builds.

I'll refresh the copyright file--I've also dumped the patch that creates the mozconfig file in favor of just copying over a /debian/mozconfig file which can be easily edited--a patch file is a lot trickier to edit, though it's now easy to create a new patch with the Debian tools that would avoid the editing.

I bet the Webupd8 maintainer would be only too happy to add Pale Moon to his PPA, we reuse lots of his source packages and rebuild them for our repo. Pale Moon would mean more hits on his blog, so I don't see a downside.

[Moonchild]

As long as the home-built versions stick to what has been published that I inspected, that's fine!

The mozconfig does have a number of superfluous entries in them and configured the browser slightly different from -release, but they are generally non-breaking, so it doesn't really matter one way or another.

Please let me now what exactly to link to from the contributed builds page and your full name to list. if these are going to be included in another repo/blog distribution channel it would likely be good to mention that as well.

[C1xLb]

I bet the Webupd8 maintainer would be only too happy to add Pale Moon to his PPA, we reuse lots of his source packages and rebuild them for our repo. Pale Moon would mean more hits on his blog, so I don't see a downside.

Getting Pale Moon into the Webupd8 PPA would be excellent...

[stevenpusser]

As long as the home-built versions stick to what has been published that I inspected, that's fine!

The mozconfig does have a number of superfluous entries in them and configured the browser slightly different from -release, but they are generally non-breaking, so it doesn't really matter one way or another.

Please let me now what exactly to link to from the contributed builds page and your full name to list. if these are going to be included in another repo/blog distribution channel it would likely be good to mention that as well.

OK, but I'll do a rebuild of the MEPIS 12 (Debian 7 Wheezy) packages first with the suggested changes. If someone else does a PPA, they'll want to reuse the MX 15 (Jessie) sources, and Mike on our team handles those.

You could point Debian-compatible users to this page, which has the information for adding the repository, or for directly downloading the deb package for a manual install.

These packages are built on Debian bases, and have no guarantees about working on Ubuntu. You'd need a PPA build for that.

[Moonchild]

Once more: please list your full name to include as maintainer...

When you have the PPA link and maintainer name as well, please post that too.

[stevenpusser]

Once more: please list your full name to include as maintainer...

When you have the PPA link and maintainer name as well, please post that too.

Sure, I'm Steve Pusser of the MEPIS Community/MX Linux Packaging Team.

Our repo's not a PPA, but I'll email the webupd8 PPA maintainer to see if he wants to build Ubuntu packages. He's a very good packager. I'll let him know he needs approval from you if he wants to modify any of the things covered in the redistribution license.

[Moonchild]

All right, I've added the MEPIS contributed build to the contributed builds page, which makes it official

If Mike (it was Mike, right?) wants to run an intended PPA build config by me to be added as well for official branding of it for Debian MX, I'll add that too

Thanks for your time and effort making Pale Moon accessible on more distributions and generally following what we've set out the browser distribution to be like!

[mmikeinsantarosa]

Moonchild,
Steve is my mentor for MX packaging:

Sure, I'm Steve Pusser of the MEPIS Community/MX Linux Packaging Team.

and I, Mike Purtell am currently handling the jessie builds for palemoon of our MX-15 distribution.

mike

[Moonchild]

Moonchild,
Steve is my mentor for MX packaging:

Sure, I'm Steve Pusser of the MEPIS Community/MX Linux Packaging Team.

and I, Mike Purtell am currently handling the jessie builds for palemoon of our MX-15 distribution.

mike

All right! Great
So what is the status of those? Do you have a direct linke to the PPA config and/or packages? Did you change anything from the MEPIS 12 build? (If not, then just a link to use is enough and I'll get it up on the page)

[stevenpusser]

I've emailed Andrei, the Webupd8 PPA maintainer, about having them build and add PM packages for the supported Ubuntu releases on their PPA, and am awaiting a reply. I did propose reusing the MX 15 mozconfig and build configurations for their builds, so they shouldn't be making any unapproved modifications.

[stevenpusser]

I've also been asked to see if we could have a palemoon-atom package in the MEPIS and MX 15 repository, which would not be built from source, but would instead just bundle the PM provided palemoon-atom static binary into an i386-only deb package, and automatically provide the extra tweaks as listed in the Debian install (palemoon.desktop file, add as an x-www-browser alternative, and so on).

Is this OK to do? I'm willing to provide any particulars about the packaging.

[Moonchild]

I've also been asked to see if we could have a palemoon-atom package in the MEPIS and MX 15 repository, which would not be built from source, but would instead just bundle the PM provided palemoon-atom static binary into an i386-only deb package, and automatically provide the extra tweaks as listed in the Debian install (palemoon.desktop file, add as an x-www-browser alternative, and so on).

Is this OK to do? I'm willing to provide any particulars about the packaging.

If it's otherwise unaltered, then repackaging into distro-specific package formats of the officially-built binaries we release is always allowed, no permission or mention required. See the redist license point 3a (the parenthesized exception).

[mmikeinsantarosa]

So what is the status of those? Do you have a direct linke to the PPA config and/or packages? Did you change anything from the MEPIS 12 build? (If not, then just a link to use is enough and I'll get it up on the page)

Sorry for the delay, work has me swamped lately.
This is the contents of the mozconfig file for Wheezy base builds

Code: Select all

export MOZILLA_OFFICIAL=1
mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-accessibility
ac_add_options --disable-parental-controls
ac_add_options --disable-webrtc
ac_add_options --disable-logging
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi
ac_add_options --disable-installer
ac_add_options --disable-updater
ac_add_options --disable-websms-backend
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-mochitests
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-debug-symbols
ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-jemalloc
ac_add_options --enable-optimize="-O3 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse"
ac_add_options --enable-chrome-format=omni
ac_add_options --x-libraries=/usr/lib
ac_add_options --prefix=/usr

We remove --enable-jemalloc & change --enable-optimize="-O2 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse" for jessie based builds.
And the rules file gets an edit for dh_auto_clean & override_dh_auto_configure: as

Code: Select all

override_dh_auto_clean:
	rm -f mozconfig
	dh_auto_clean

override_dh_auto_configure:
	cp debian/mozconfig mozconfig

This link http://main.mepis-deb.org/ has all of the repository settings, MX-15 being the latest jessie based distribution.
edit: - corrected.
Mike

[Moonchild]

Thanks!
A few notes:

• It's recommended to use -O2 instead of -O3 for your optimization flags. -O3 can sometimes cause unexpected stability issues and won't provide any significant performance win for Pale Moon.
• I'm not familiar which version has which kernel, but if your targets have a Linux 3.* kernel, then you should disable jemalloc and let it use the system malloc instead. Also, for the upcoming version 26 and later, jemalloc should not be used any longer.
• A number of your configure flags are no longer needed. Since they do no harm, it's fine to keep them, so just FYI.

Otherwise it looks good!

I'll add the link to the contributed builds page.

[stevenpusser]

Debian 7 Wheezy is based on a 3.2 kernel, and Debian 8 Jessie on a 3.16 one, so I'll disable the -jmalloc for Wheezy also, and switch both builds to -02 for the next release. We basically inherited those settings from the old dead PPA configuration when we reused its source files; so it's good to get those straightened out.

FWIW, we're also rebuilding and using a cutting (bleeding?) edge 4.3 Liquorix kernel in our test repositories, too, so our users have quite a few kernels to play with, with 3.2 being the minimum.

I still have not heard anything back from webupd8 about them handling an Ubuntu PPA version, though.

If anyone wants to set up a PPA, here's some instructions: https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA

I can help with the source files that need to be uploaded; Launchpad does the package building and hosting on their own servers. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for Debian, so we build packages on our own home machines for our Debian-based releases.

[flyingmarco]

I am no fan of an PPA for Palemoon. I use the Palemoon installer for Linux that is installing, updating removing and more. PPA is personal and if the person not is able to keep this up to data then it is an shame. Use simply the Linux installer it works great and it is handy too.