Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

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joe04

Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by joe04 » 2018-01-29, 23:29

Summary

Now is a good time to make a general fork of uBlock Origin (uBO) for XUL browsers. (This means Pale Moon, Basilisk, Waterfox, etc.) I'm looking to assist at least one other capable, motivated developer to make this happen.

We would start with my xBA 1.0 codebase then make the appropriate changes to be a like-uBO for regular users. It's a stable, reliable codebase I've used without any problems for over three months.

Important Note: This is not a "keep-up-with-everything-gorhill-is-doing" fork, but something very similar with the stock uBO look and feel. (Don't worry, folks, it'll still get the job done.)

Current Context

As I've clearly summarized, XUL is effectively mothballed post-Firefox 57. And not surprisingly, the first known regression hit with 1.14.20. But it's getting worse: the logger problem on the current release-candidate is marked "Available" because gorhill doesn't want to fix it. Which means it probably won't be fixed.

(Frankly, I can't blame gorhill one bit; he's done a lot of work on uBO and uMatrix for Chrome and Firefox in recent months. He's already dropped XUL support for uMatrix, so I suspect he's quite close to doing so for uBO as well. These are my thoughts, though; I don't presume to speak for gorhill, only sharing my observations as a uBO diehard who has followed his work closely and knows it better than most.)

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Okay, so the problem is clear enough. Now, what to do about it?

My proposal:
I'd like to assist at least one other motivated, capable uBO diehard to setup a fork for general use on XUL browsers.

Specifically:
We will use my existing xBA 1.0 source as the starting point, as I've already chosen the best possible XUL codebase of 1.14.16 and then backported some of gorhill's recent patches. Being a general fork, we will restore the stock panel among other changes. (But those are details for a real project if it's to happen; please don't fixate on these details or make suggestions in this thread.)

Note that I emphasize the word assist, because this is certainly not something I'm willing to undertake by myself. I'm not even willing to host it on my personal GitHub. (Where to host on GitHub can be worked out later. For now, I'm clearly stating what my level of involvement would be.)

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How to Proceed

I created an issue on my xBA GitHub that has the intial work I mentioned above. It's a stock uBO 1.14.16 with the appropriate patches from my xBA 1.0 work. (Everything is explained at the issue.)

What's REALLY needed is a uBO diehard willing to TAKE OWNERSHIP of this proposed fork. Again, I'm really only willing to assist.

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Spread the word

Even if you're not willing or able to do it (and there's no shame in that), please forward this proposal to other corners of the XUL browser ecosystem. I'm a very contented Pale Moon user and don't have Reddit or other accounts (nor will I create them just for this).

So, please spread the word. You can link to this thread or the GitHub one.
Last edited by joe04 on 2018-01-30, 05:54, edited 4 times in total.

joe04

Re: Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by joe04 » 2018-01-30, 06:00

Important Update:
All the action should now be at the GitHub issue I setup.

As I've explained there, I've done the inital code changes tonight (which were more straightforward than I thought while writing my long proposal). I also uploaded a new .xpi file with these changes to the 2nd issue comment.

At this point somebody needs to take ownership of this fork effort for it to have a future. (That's not to say that a completely different uBO fork for XUL may come along; I'm purely talking about my specific proposal.)

So, please do spread the word!
Last edited by joe04 on 2018-01-30, 06:03, edited 1 time in total.

joe04

Re: Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by joe04 » 2018-02-02, 05:46

There's one more important point that didn't occur to me before but needs to be stated.

For any uBO user on a XUL browser reading this, these recent developments I've described are a cause for concern but not a cause for alarm. The fact is, whatever version of uBO your using right now will continue to operate the same tomorrow, 3 months from now, or probably even 3 years from now.

Thus, the one long-term option any XUL user of uBO has is to simply stay put on whatever release of regular uBO they feel is best for them. (It's not the ideal option, no, but as one who has a lot of knowledge about how the tool operates, I can assure you that much of the core functionality will continue to be useful for a long time to come.)

Forking is still the better long-term option, but it's not an all-or-nothing difference.

Hopefully that provides a more balanced perspective on this matter.

Pethrow

Re: Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by Pethrow » 2018-02-03, 22:35

Thanks ! It works

joe04

Re: Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by joe04 » 2018-02-04, 17:08

Pethrow wrote:Thanks ! It works
You're welcome. To be clear, are you referring to 1.14.16+bp1 ?

Pethrow

Re: Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by Pethrow » 2018-02-05, 19:18

joe04 wrote:
Pethrow wrote:Thanks ! It works
You're welcome. To be clear, are you referring to 1.14.16+bp1 ?

XBA

Latitude

Re: Proposal for a general fork of uBlock Origin for XUL browsers

Unread post by Latitude » 2018-04-29, 13:20

joe04 wrote:
I think this is the time to change the logo.
Last edited by Latitude on 2018-04-29, 13:21, edited 1 time in total.

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