119270 - plain tarball should contain talkback agent

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Build Config, defect, P3)

Description

[poelzi]

some people (like me) use a automatic system to update mozilla with the tarball
version.
i think there is a hugh leak of talkback data because the talkback client is not
contained that version.

Comment 1

[Olav Vitters]

dupe of bug 53993? (claims talkback.xpi is scriptable)

Comment 2

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Dupe.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 53993 ***

Comment 3

[poelzi]

this fixes the problem not.
if there is a static directroy with the lastet xpi's ok, but there is no way for
a automatic installation of the talkback agent.

there a two ways:

- add the talkback client in the tarball
- add a static directory like lastest with the xpi files

Comment 4

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Over to Granrose.
 

Comment 5

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Really reassign.

Comment 6

[Jon Granrose]

there isn't a milestone far enough in the future to accurately target this.

Comment 7

[Aleksander Adamowski]

Sometime ago there was a tarball named mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-talkback.tar.gz
built in the nightlies directory. That was dropped for some reason, but why?
There is a mozilla-win32-talkback.zip, why is there none for Linux?
There's a tarball for Linux, but without talkback.
There's a talkback builds for Linux, but it's an installer one (hard to automate
with shell scripts...)

Talkback tarball would make locating regressions on Linux so much simpler...

I currently have no time to download the sea build (the one with installer, only
that one contains talkback) every day and install each version to a different
folder.
With talkback tarballs, I could make a simple shell script that would:
- run every day from cron
- download the
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest-trunk/mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-talkback.tar.gz
- untar it to a directory whose name is based on current date (YYYY-MM-DD)

Then, when looking for a particular regression (at waht date it appeared), I
would just run builds directly from those archival directories.
With the wonders of binary search, I would locate the exact build that
introduced the regression. And I'd still have talkback (I don't want to waste
disk space for non-talkback builds).

Comment 8

[Aleksander Adamowski]

And to counter the argument that the installer is the one and only proper option
and should be eliminated:

No, I don't agree with that. That's why:
1. You can't script installation with the graphic installer, at least not easily
with simple shell scripts.
2. One of the strongest arguments in Mozilla advocacy when I'm trying to
convince  my friends to use Mozilla: You don't even need to cope with some
installer - you can just grab a zip or a tarball and simply unpack it then run it.
3. Running a GTK installer with elevated privileges is a security risk. With
tarball, you only need to run Mozilla after unpacking so that it registers the
components. Less GTK code run as root is better.
4. It would be easier to construct RPM and DEB packages from tarballs.
5. Some people just plainly dislike "next, next, next, next...." user interfaces.

Comment 9

[Aleksander Adamowski]

Granrose: Why is it targeted for distant future? 

This really would make work of QA much easier, to make thos builds, and it can't
be really that hard to do this?
I mean, come on, it's just making a new kind of package that includes files that
are already being built everyday...

Comment 10

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The real question is, why do the Win32 ZIP builds include talkback while the
Linux .tar.gz builds do not?  The installer is MUCH more commonly used on Win32
than on Linux (where it's avoided like the plague, with good reason).

I don't care if we WONTFIX this (and I disagree on reopening this bug; it should
be a dup of bug 53993).  But we should WONTFIX for a _good_ reason.  I have yet
to see a good reason not to roll talkback into the .tar.gz builds.  It would
make Linux QA significantly easier and more productive at no cost that I can
see.  If there is a cost I'm missing, please just tell me instead of hiding it, ok?

So could someone give me a reason other than "we decided this 2 years ago and if
we told you why, we'd have to kill you" for not including talkback in the Linux
tarballs?

I'm requesting blocking 1.4a status for this bug in the hope that that will at
least cause SOMEONE to look at it (this does not mean I think it should block
1.4a, necessarily).

Comment 11

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

Chofmann, little help?

/be

Comment 12

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

This bug might move forward if someone offered a patch to the build and
packaging scripts. From what I can tell, it's just a matter of a bunch of work
that no one wants to do and then maintain. If someone volunteers to do that work
and maintain it then I'm all for having talkback in the linux zip builds. 

Comment 13

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Asa, he build/package scripts already do this on Windows.  So all that code is
already being maintained.  Further, they used to do it on Linux; then that
stopped happening (see comments in bug 53993).

If someone can point me to the bug that turned off talkback in tarballs, I'd be
perfectly willing to create a backout patch for the build system part of that.

Comment 14

[Aleksander Adamowski]

CC-ing John Granrose, he might be interested in this.

Bug 43387 seems related. Bug 99994 also, but is outdated and seems to not
contain any useful information.

Comment 15

[Aleksander Adamowski]

oops.

Comment 16

[Jon Granrose]

engineer gone, wontfix.  if you want it, reopen the bug and reassign it to 
yourself.

Comment 17

[[e-mail]]

since when is this a reason for wontfix (" The problem described is a bug which
will never be fixed")? letting this stay open will better reflect the real
status of the bug and make it easier for other people who want to file this bug
to find it in the database.

Comment 18

[Jon Granrose]

ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

Comment 19

[Jon Granrose]

have fun.

Comment 20

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Talkback was discontinued with Gecko 1.9 (Fx3 Tb3 Sm2), but SeaMonkey trunk builds now come with a new crash reporter (Breakpad) built in.

=> WORKSFORME.