1888836 - Request for Inclusion of Geckodriver Package Alongside Firefox in the Official Mozilla APT Repository

Status: NEW

(Release Engineering :: Release Automation, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Mr_Spade]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Decided to switch from the Snap version of Firefox to the one provided by the official Mozilla APT repository for Ubuntu 22.04.
2. Removed the Snap installation of Firefox and installed the latest Firefox release from the Mozilla repository.
3. Noticed that while Firefox was successfully installed, the corresponding geckodriver package, which is required for Selenium automation and testing with Firefox, was not available through the same APT repository.

Actual results:

• Currently, Ubuntu 22.04 comes bundled with Firefox and geckodriver installed via Snap technology, allowing them to be installed and updated at the same time.
• However, upon changing to the Mozilla-provided Firefox via APT, there is no matching geckodriver package available in the same repository.
• This leads to a dependency gap where users who prefer the APT-managed Firefox cannot conveniently install and manage geckodriver alongside their browser.

Expected results:

• It would be beneficial if the official Mozilla APT repository included a compatible geckodriver package that can be easily installed and updated alongside Firefox for Ubuntu 22.04 users.
• By doing so, developers and testers who rely on Selenium and Firefox for automated web browsing tasks could maintain a consistent and integrated setup without having to manually download and manage geckodriver from external sources.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Installer' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I am not certain if the chosen component is correct, but I confirm this report as an enhancement suggestion. Thank you for your detailed description!

Comment 3

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

I think this makes more sense in the same component as the one where the creation of the Mozilla repo happened.