Alexander Sack (asac)'s software site

When I set up the network-manager trunk PPA I also planned to provide daily builds at some point. I don’t want to go into depth, but dailies are really a great way to get a better working upstream relationship as they can just commit fixes to the branch they care about most (yeah, developers usually live for the trunk) and users will instantly be able to verify it the next day. Further it helps upstreams, because they now can tap the (impressively huge) ubuntu community more effectively. Also with a bunch of users running your dailies, upstream gets instant feedback on regressions they introduce, which usually reduces the required debugging to a minimum.

How was it done?

After thinking about it for a bit I found that I don’t want to setup my own daily bot and asked Fabien (fta) – who already runs the daily builds of the ubuntu mozilla and chromium teams – what it would take to include our network manager packages in his daily build bot. The requirements were rather easy to satisfy:

• ensure that no one not fully trusted has write access to the branches
• provide a get-orig-source rule that produces proper orig.tar.gz from latest git snapshot
• provide a LOCAL_BRANCH feature which allows the bot to just update a local copy of the upstream git tree on every update rather than cloning the full git every day

You can look at the debian/rules of our network-manager packaging branch to see how we implemented the required get-orig-source and LOCAL_BRANCH feature for git.

After fixing our branches to match those requirements, Fabien swiftly added our network-manager, network-manager-applet and modemmanager branches to his build bot and now daily builds come out of it every day! Yay!

How to enable the daily PPA?

Add the ppa lines to your apt sources.list:

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/trunk/ubuntu karmic main

and import the PPA key:

    sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys BC8EBFE8 

Next run

    sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

which should bring you the latest NM trunk dailies; reboot after uprade has finished.

Who should use dailies like this?

• All advanced users that run the current ubuntu development release (e.g. karmic for now) that also want to focus their testing efforts on network-manager
• Users that have filed a bug against NM which then got fixed upstream can verify the fix by trying our daily build.
• Since we are targeting 0.8 for karmic the dailies reflect what will go into karmic soon. So if you like to run the bleeding edge and like to report issues right when they happen, this PPA is meant for you too.
• We also have jaunty builds, but those are not yet fully tested. If you want and run jaunty please try them and report your findings back (of course, be sure that you know how to recover from not having network-manager network)

What to do if there is a regression?

You can find me (asac) and other NM developers in the #nm channel on irc.freenode.net.

Update: easier way to add the ppa on karmic is to just run (thx to Dominic Evans – oldmanuk for pointing this out):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:network-manager/trunk

In order to not loose upstream support for nss/nspr, we are working on upgrading nss to the latest upstream release in hardy, intrepid and jaunty. The plan is to first get some pre-testing in a PPA and if that works well, go through -proposed to -updates and -security.

Although nss and nspr follow really strict ABI rules – otherwise we wouldn’t consider to do this – this kind of update needs extra care and testing; even more so, because this has special implications on distribution upgrades. For example, the version in hardy-security will be higher than the version in intrepid-release, which can lead to tricky situations.

To document the progress of our efforts, we set up a wiki page. It also gives information how to test the special implications mentioned above.

OK, so here the instructions on what needs to be done:

Prerequisites:

Hardy, intrepid and jaunty users need to upgrade nss and nspr to the latest versions in the nss3.12.3 ppa. Just enable the PPA and update your system to do that.

Testing:

1. Use firefox and friends and report any regression you find (comment or IRC).
2. There are also other applications you use that might be affected and you would want to test; to spot those, please check the output of “apt-cache rdepends libnss3-1d libnspr4-0d”. Please test those thoroughly as well.
3. Besides from upgrading real installs to latest nss/nspr from the ppa, we also need to do two extra tests with intrepid and jaunty installs – pure installs, that don’t have any security/stability updates yet. See the wiki pages “special testing” section for background on this. As usual, all tests can also be done in VMs; for most a chroot would be fine as well.

Let me know about your test results – either comment here or drop me a message in #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.ubuntu.com.

Edit: doing this has some risks; so if you rely on a rock solid ubuntu experience, don’t do this.

There is some valuable discussion about what the multisearch extension we just added to firefox in alpha3 does and why it does it the way it does it. Instead of replying to all the threads and bugs individually we decided that its better to put the information to a central place (like this blog).

So here the basic facts on what Multisearch is:

1. First of all it’s an experiment designed for an ubuntu alpha release (meaning: this is not expected to make all happy, nor should someone expect this to be of production quality now).
2. The multisearch extension adds a new search place to your browser experience, namely: newtab; hence the name “Multisearch”.
3. The multisearch extension changes search identifiers in all four search places (homepage, awesomebar, quicksearch, newtab); also we had to switch to Google’s “Custom Search” as that was technically the most feasible way for us to get the anonymous usage patterns we are looking for in this experiment.
4. The multisearch extension can be disabled in Tools -> Addons; this was done intentionally so you can easily (and should) do this if the Custom Search interferes with your workflow.

So that’s basically what it does; imo, there is not much else to wonder ‘bout, really! Also there is by far no conspiracy, nor do we want to remove features from your google search; it’s just that for now we want the data for your usage
patterns mentioned in 3.

Anyway, I don’t want to reply to each and every claim and rumor and conspiracy theory posted around the web; but still I want to remove some understandable concerns that sprung up. So here a few more points that I think are worthwhile to mention:

• “Multisearch” (extension id: me001@canonical.com) is not intended to stay forever – at least not in its current form.
• “Multsearch” 0.0.1 does not reflect how a newtab experience would look like, if we decide to implement something like that for karmic; check out the mozilla newtab efforts to get an idea [1][2]; something like that combined with our own ideas would probably be closer to any eventual karmic newtab experience. If you like the general idea of having a useful newtab experience and want to contribute, use this event as a chance to file bugs about it. Remember to tag your bug “multisearch”, as otherwise we might not see it when reviewing all the feedback we got.
• “Multisearch” is not a well thought out name ;); it was just choosen as a project codename; we didn’t want to put much thought in it for now; also I felt using “Multisearch” is a better name than just “me001@canonical.com”.

Last but not least, I want to answer a few core concerns I picked up from the various places I found:

• “You installed this without asking/permission”: We regularly change features for software during the development release; also we add new stuff to our default installs that will get automatically installed if you opted into ubuntu-desktop; I agree that it might have been better to move this to a standalone package and seeding that through ubuntu-desktop; but then its just an intermediate thing what you see now and you can always disable it in Tools -> Addons for the time being.
• “You are trying to make money from me”: For now nobody wants to make money from you. If we wanted to make money putting this in an early alpha release would probably be a pretty bad business decision. Even if we wanted to make money from you, we should still clarify what “we” means here; it basically means “ubuntu”: and even though it might practically mean canonical its obvious that getting a constant revenue stream will help to fund more talented developers and events to keep ubuntu the best distribution that exists.
• “Custom Search delivers an inferior search experience”: this is true, but using the “Custom Search” bits was the most feasible way of pursuing this experiment for us; we are also sure that this experiment will be of a great longterm benefit for the ubuntu project as a whole, so please be patient.

[1] – http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/03/new-tab-page-proposed-design-principles-and-prototype
[2] – http://hg.mozilla.org/users/dmills_mozilla.com/about-tab/

Jaunty:

11:11 < asac> we only use official branding for our default browser
11:11 < asac> (default for jaunty is 3.0)
11:11 < asac> also we explicitly want both to be installable side by side
11:11 < asac> and same branding would make them indistinguishable on your desktop
11:11 < asac> another point to consider is that branding is part of top-level UI
11:11 < asac> and changing (top-level) UI is not something we do in stable/security updates anyway

Karmic:

12:12 < asac> we only use official branding for our default browser
12:12 < asac> good news is that firefox 3.5 will become our default browser in karmic soon
12:12 < asac> - which is when we will do the branding switch
12:12 < asac> if you are curious, there is a blueprint for transitioning to firefox 3.5 by default
12:12 < asac> it is called desktop-karmic-firefox-3.5 and has lots of TODO's
12:12 < asac> wanna help? join #ubuntu-mozillateam on freenode!

Update: firefox 3.5 is not called Shiretoko in karmic anymore. Thx!

Update: please read http://www.asoftsite.org/s9y/archives/161-FAQ-Why-is-my-firefox-3.5-still-called-Shiretoko.html#c927 before commenting on this post.

(See: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-karmic-firefox-3.5)

It’s definitely hot news today: firefox 3.5 was released – you can finally stop holding your breath!

Also checkout the release notes or get an overview on what is new in this great release.

So after all the partying, you might end up wondering: “Great, Where can I get it for ubuntu now?”

As usual, the answer depends on what Ubuntu version you are running:

Karmic and Jaunty users:

• just install the currently available firefox-3.5 (and firefox-3.5-gnome-support) package(s) from universe and wait. The final bits will be there really soon.
• If you want to have them earlier, enable ubuntu-mozilla-security PPA where the bits will land first. Enabling this PPA also will help us test security updates before they get rolled to the masses in future; so if you don’t mind a slightly increased risk of breakage keep this enabled; in the unlikely event that you see a regression from this archive, instantly report them to the ubuntu mozillateam.
• If the security PPA is still not bleeding edge enough for you, go for the daily PPA, a great service that is run by ubuntu mozillateam for quite some time now.

Hardy or Intrepid users:

• stay tuned and wait for further announcements. We haven’t decided where to make the bits available yet.
• In any case, if you don’t mind running daily builds you can use the ubuntu-mozilla-daily PPA now.

Update: firefox-3.5 and xulrunnner-1.9.1 available in karmic and in jaunty-security / jaunty-updates (yay!).

Some might have noticed, but I think its still worth to bloggonouce that packages for connman and connman-gnome are available in the jaunty universe now.

Remember that its a good idea to stop NetworkManager

and restart connman before testing this.

Hi,

thanks to Fabien we have now a daily PPA for bleeding edge mozilla packages set up and running.

A main reason to track those daily builds is to notice packaging or upstream regressions as they come. Its much easier and more efficient to fix bugs if we have a narrow regression window than debugging something whose commit we cannot easily spot.

To get things started we added firefox-3.1 (xulrunner-1.9.1) and firefox-3.2 (xulrunner-1.9.2) to our daily build bot for now; more packages will be added based on demand and time.

Fortunately, the ubuntu mozillateam uses packaging techniques having backporters in mind and hence can easily provide the same builds for all “current” ubuntu releases (meaning: hardy, intrepid, jaunty are supported for now).

If you are curious and want to track daily builds, subscribe to the “ubuntu-mozilla-daily” PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive.

Feel free to spread this around and encourage advanced users and mozilla fans to track that PPA, but remember that the daily packages are auto built without much testing and hence you might end up in unexpected bugs. So, be prepared to downgrade to the previous daily when that happens.

Also keep in mind that you shouldn’t file regressions of those daily packages in launchpad. Instead come to #ubuntu-mozillateam and let us know directly (alternatively send a mail to mailto:ubuntu-mozillateam@lists.ubuntu.com).

Enjoy!

Ever wondered how to get your plugin in the ubufox plugin finder wizard? Or ever asked yourself, what the Xb-Npp- fields mean that most plugin packages have in their debian/control entry? Even wondered which directory to link your plugin .so files to in order to make them available for all the packaged mozilla apps?

To give you some answers, there finally is a wiki page about the most important packaging magics you should remember when dealing with mozilla plugin packages in ubuntu:

Read: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins

Just ask if there are open points you would like to see addressed or clarified. We obviously can populate that wiki page with even more valuable content. Or just do it yourself

Moving ahead in an attempt to improve my communication with all of you, I decided to set up my personal timeline @ identi.ca.

Basically this mean: if you ever wondered what I am doing or working on, your answers might be right there … just one click away.

Please forgive that these go out so late … but as a matter of fact I tried to be on vacation .

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Meetings/Minutes/2008-11-02

Note that we have quite a few open Actions; so enough food for anyone who wants to help out in ubuntu mozillaland.

on friday, the great fta uploaded xulrunner-1.9.1 and firefox-3.1 to the ubuntu universe archive (jaunty). It took the weekend to get archive admin attention, but now it seems like it will show up on your mirror quite soon (hugs to all involved here).

Similar to what we did for firefox 3.0 in gutsy, we allow you to install this package next to your “production” firefox 3.0 install. This is done, by creating a copy of your existing firefox-3.0 profile the first time you start firefox-3.1. So don’t be scared to test this, just because you fear to bust your profile. Once 3.1 is final we will present you with a choice again where you can decide which profile to use in future.

A few more words on bugs:
If you have pending firefox-3.0 bugs that you feel would be important to get fixed for 3.1, please add the firefox-3.1 target to your bug and state which package version you are using.

From now on we will update the firefox-3.1 and xulrunner-1.9.1 package quite frequently, so if you file bugs, remember to check if they still apply if you receive an update.

Also to make bug triaging more easily, I would like to remind everyone that mozilla packages have a normalized bug description format ... which will allow us to swiftly forward your bugs to upstream on your behalf.

Enjoy!

Last week the Ubuntu Mozillateam had a scheduled meeting in #ubuntu-meeting on freenode.

During that meeting we mostly defined the ACTIONs and outstanding mozilla tasks for intrepid.

Thanks to Sasa Bodiroza (jazzva), the Minutes are now available for public consumption.

One of the important features we want to support in intrepid is out-of-the-box 3g support.

Now that Network Manager 0.7 has entered the archive, I’d like to to ask you to test your 3g hardware with it and report your findings to the 3G Hardware page on the wiki. We want to hear about all results – good and bad ones. Just remember to open a bug in launchpad and link it to your result on that wiki page.

How to test

If you are running intrepid, you just need to apt-get upgrade to get the current network-manager 0.7. Alternatively, you can also use the Network Manager PPA which usually has even more recent snapshots in it.

If you are using hardy, the PPA is currently the only source to track network manager 0.7 progress in ubuntu.

Edit: Finally, the latest daily intrepid livecd’s come with NetworkManager 0.7. Please test them as well.

Known issues

1. We have dropped all driver tweaks for now. This means you most likely see regressions with orinoco and madwifi/ath drivers.
2. /etc/network/interfaces is currently not recognized. Better remove all entries (except the “iface lo” one) from it to avoid confusing behaviour. The long term idea is to provide legacy backend for network-manager that parses your /etc/network/interfaces as good as possible. If thats not enough for some you probably will have to uninstall network-manager. In case our legacy backend will not reach a stable enough state for intrepid, we might go back to the dumb “blacklisting” approach we used in hardy.
3. network manager applet has no UI to disconnect a particular interface. So do not get confused if you suddenly are connected to wired and wireless at the same time.
4. VPN plugins are not yet available. I added an initial package for the openvpn plugin to the Network Manager PPA (intrepid only) for now. Once I have good feedback I will do the same for the other vpn variants and eventually upload those packages to the real archive.

How to report bugs

To file a bug, please follow the instructions below and file a bug using this link.

In general, Network Manager 0.7 bugs should have the word “0.7” in their bug summary, so I can easily filter them out.

If you encoutner connectivity issues with Network Manager 0.7 and your wifi/wired setup, please attach your complete syslog taken after you reproduced your issue.

If you are having 3g issues, please attach the complete output of lshal as well.

Please remember to search the current network-manager bugs to avoid filing duplicates. However, if in doubt, open a new bug rather than adding information to potential duplicates. Just name the bug you think you might see a dupe off in your new bug; we will sort them out properly.

A few days ago, the ubuntu mozilla-extension-dev team published their first monthly report for Jul 08.

Thanks for all contributors that helped us to get where we are.

If you are interested in helping out on extensions, read the extensions team wiki page and start to lurk on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net, our team will be surely be happy to help you and answer your questions.

Hi again,

first I would like to thank all that helped out testing the ffox 2.0.0.15
security updates a few weeks ago. We now have new batch of firefox
security updates going out soon. Please help testing them and give us
feedback through the mozilla qa tracker (http://mozilla.qa.ubuntu.com).

As usual, we need testers for all supported ubuntu releases. Those are:

+ dapper – firefox 1.5 + feisty – firefox 2 + gutsy – firefox 2 + hardy – firefox 3

To participate, visit the mozilla qa site (http://mozilla.qa.ubuntu.com)
and click on the package version you want to test and submit results for
the test-cases listed there.

The built packages are available from my PPA and you can find
instructions and the sources.list entries required on top of the
mozilla QA tracker page.

If you don’t have a native install of the above ubuntu releases, using a
VM or chroot is perfectly fine as well. Instructions on how to setup
VirtualBox can be found at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox.

As usual we expect it to be quite difficult to find testers for dapper,
feisty and gutsy. So if you have a few spare cycles and want to make a
difference, jump in, setup a VM and help out!

As always, in case you have questions or run into issues, feel free to
ask on #ubuntu-mozillateam or #ubuntu-testing on irc.freenode.net.

Thanks in advance for your help and happy testing!

– Alexander (asac)