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:
- Use firefox and friends and report any regression you find (comment or IRC).
- 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.
- 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.