nss 3.12.3 SRU - testing needed

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.