630963 - about:support doesn't work on some Linux distributions

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

Currently we assume that the libraries libglib-2.0.so, libgobject-2.0.so, and libgio-2.0.so exist. Turns out that it isn't the case for Fedora 12 and probably other distros -- the files that they do have are called libglib-2.0.so.0 etc.

We could either remove the Linux code entirely, or catch the exceptions and display "(Unknown location)" if any of the libraries we need aren't found.

Comment 1

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

Attachment: Option 1: Remove Linux code

Roland, thoughts? Or would you rather we fix it instead? :)

Comment 2

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

Attachment: Option 2: fix library names and handle missing libraries

This is the other thing we could do, though I think it makes our code significantly more complex.

Comment 3

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

Comment on attachment 509205 [details] [diff] [review]
Option 2: fix library names and handle missing libraries

This passed try server.

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

OpenSUSE has both libg*-2.0.so and libg*-2.0.so.0 versions (as symlinks); is
it certain that libg*-2.0.so.0 exist or may it be needed to probe for either?

Comment 5

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

the .0 version should always exist, see <http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO.html#AEN46>. The non-.0 version doesn't seem to be as widely available.

Comment 6

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

my thoughts:
1. if it's a pain, *temporarily* remove the linux code (or just the code for displaying profile whatever is easier or just display unknown location; again whatever is easiest) since linux users are less than 5% of our users
2. in the long term,though, i.e. when we release 3.3, we need to support Ubuntu and hopefully (I guess thinking out loud) the top 3 other desktop Linux distros whatever they may be (I am quite happy with Ubuntu for desktop and haven't used other distros for the desktop recently)

Comment 7

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

Comment on attachment 509189 [details] [diff] [review]
Option 1: Remove Linux code

OK, I'm going to count that as a negative then.

Comment 8

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Currently we assume that the libraries libglib-2.0.so, libgobject-2.0.so, and
> libgio-2.0.so exist. Turns out that it isn't the case for Fedora 12 and
> probably other distros -- the files that they do have are called
> libglib-2.0.so.0 etc.

Only the versioned library names are supposed to be used. The non versioned ones are not installed usually as they are only used for development.
So accessing libXYZ-2.0.so is just wrong at runtime. That holds true for "normal" Linux libraries (not talking about nspr or nss ;-)).
A disadvantage is that those version symbols (aka filenames) change when API changes occur in future versions.

Comment 9

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Note there is a related bug: bug 624530

Comment 10

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

Thanks for the details, Mike. I think the version bump due to the API change is unavoidable, since then our ctypes defs might need to change too.

Comment 11

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Comment on attachment 509205 [details] [diff] [review]
Option 2: fix library names and handle missing libraries

Sorry about the delay on this review.

The code looks good, and the changes make sense to me.  r=me.

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 12

[Rain [:rain1] (inactive)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/0966cdf471fc