[gentoo-user] Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[gentoo-user] Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Grant Edwards]

Last week on all my systems emerge upgraded firefox (3.5.2-r1)
and xul-runner (1.9.1.2-r2).

Now it's decided it wants to downgrade all of them to 3.0.13
and 1.9.0.13.

Looking at the package database page, I see that firefox
3.5.2-r1 is marked as unstable (~x86).  Same for xulrunner
1.3.1.2-r1. That explains why emerge wants to downgrade to the
stable version: I don't have ~x86 unmasked for
firefox/xulrunner and never have had.

What I don't understand is why they got upgraded last week.

Were firefox 3.5.2 and xulrunner 1.9.1.2 marked as stable last
week and then changed back to unstable this week?

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Jesus is my POSTMASTER
                                  at               GENERAL ...
                               visi.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 25 August 2009 23:04:12 Grant Edwards wrote:
> Last week on all my systems emerge upgraded firefox (3.5.2-r1)
> and xul-runner (1.9.1.2-r2).
>
> Now it's decided it wants to downgrade all of them to 3.0.13
> and 1.9.0.13.
>
> Looking at the package database page, I see that firefox
> 3.5.2-r1 is marked as unstable (~x86).  Same for xulrunner
> 1.3.1.2-r1. That explains why emerge wants to downgrade to the
> stable version: I don't have ~x86 unmasked for
> firefox/xulrunner and never have had.
>
> What I don't understand is why they got upgraded last week.
>
> Were firefox 3.5.2 and xulrunner 1.9.1.2 marked as stable last
> week and then changed back to unstable this week?

IIRC someone posted in the last few days that firefox and xulrunner were 
briefly stable for a few hours. 

fwiw, firefox-3.0.13 and xulrunner-1.9.0.13 are ~arch here, I synced two 
hours ago and my mirror is 8-12 hours behind the master.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Grant Edwards<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> Were firefox 3.5.2 and xulrunner 1.9.1.2 marked as stable last
> week and then changed back to unstable this week?

I think so, yes. If you read the Changelog file, it shows this:

  21 Aug 2009; Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org>
  mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
  revert all stable keywords

  20 Aug 2009; Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>
  mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
  Stable for HPPA (bug #280393).

  20 Aug 2009; Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org>
  mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
  stable x86, security bug 280393

[gentoo-user] Re: Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-08-25, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Grant Edwards<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Were firefox 3.5.2 and xulrunner 1.9.1.2 marked as stable last
>> week and then changed back to unstable this week?
>
> I think so, yes. If you read the Changelog file, it shows this:
>
>   21 Aug 2009; Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org>
>   mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
>   revert all stable keywords
>
>   20 Aug 2009; Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>
>   mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
>   Stable for HPPA (bug #280393).
>
>   20 Aug 2009; Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org>
>   mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
>   stable x86, security bug 280393

I forgot about the ebuild changelog file -- I knew I should
have been able to figure this out somehow.  It was the
afternoon/night of the 20th that they got upgraded.  Heck, the
packages were probably back to unstable before the all of
builds finished.

For other packages I wouldn't care much, but flipping back and
forth between "semi-major" versions of firefox/xulrunner is
both fairly disruptive and takes hours and hours of build-time.

I guess I'll leave them as-is for a while.  Firefox 3.5 is
noticably snappier, and downgrading them will take all evening.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! You were s'posed
                                  at               to laugh!
                               visi.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Grant Edwards<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2009-08-25, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Grant Edwards<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Were firefox 3.5.2 and xulrunner 1.9.1.2 marked as stable last
>>> week and then changed back to unstable this week?
>>
>> I think so, yes. If you read the Changelog file, it shows this:
>>
>>   21 Aug 2009; Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org>
>>   mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
>>   revert all stable keywords
>>
>>   20 Aug 2009; Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>
>>   mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
>>   Stable for HPPA (bug #280393).
>>
>>   20 Aug 2009; Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org>
>>   mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r1.ebuild:
>>   stable x86, security bug 280393
>
> I forgot about the ebuild changelog file -- I knew I should
> have been able to figure this out somehow.  It was the
> afternoon/night of the 20th that they got upgraded.  Heck, the
> packages were probably back to unstable before the all of
> builds finished.
>
> For other packages I wouldn't care much, but flipping back and
> forth between "semi-major" versions of firefox/xulrunner is
> both fairly disruptive and takes hours and hours of build-time.
>
> I guess I'll leave them as-is for a while.  Firefox 3.5 is
> noticably snappier, and downgrading them will take all evening.

If it's working for you, you could always unmask it and at least not
have to worry about it trying to force a downgrade onto you.

OT:
I rarely use Firefox on linux but, on windows, 3.5 takes a longer time
to load compared to 3.0 (and 3.0 took longer than 2.x). I'm sure
add-ons and update checks are contributing mostly to that, but I
remember the good old days when Firefox started up faster than Mozilla
Suite. :)

I can't remember the reason, but it's a common complaint that Mozilla
products are slower in general on Linux (I even saw an article
claiming the windows version of FF running in WINE can outperform the
native Linux version of FF on the same machine) and I'm certainly one
who has experienced that. I don't know if there's some configuration
trick I never learned maybe.

Seamonkey when using its classic theme has a more responsive UI in
general, one of the reasons I still use it despite its clearly
inferior javascript/page rendering speed. (The main reason is the
MultiZilla extension, I'm so used to it. When Seamonkey 1.x is EOL'ed
it'll be a sad day for me.)

[gentoo-user] Re: Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-08-25, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:

> I rarely use Firefox on linux but, on windows, 3.5 takes a longer time
> to load compared to 3.0 (and 3.0 took longer than 2.x). I'm sure
> add-ons and update checks are contributing mostly to that, but I
> remember the good old days when Firefox started up faster than Mozilla
> Suite. :)

I haven't really paid much attention to start-up times, but
page loads in 3.5 feel a fair bit faster. I've also noticed
that 3.5 doesn't pause repeatedly while I'm typing a URL like
3.0 used to.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I'm wet!  I'm wild!
                                  at               
                               visi.com            

[gentoo-user] Re: Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 08/26/2009 01:01 AM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>[...]
> I can't remember the reason, but it's a common complaint that Mozilla
> products are slower in general on Linux (I even saw an article
> claiming the windows version of FF running in WINE can outperform the
> native Linux version of FF on the same machine) and I'm certainly one
> who has experienced that.

I did test it and Firefox for Windows beats the hell out of the Linux 
version in every test.  You can search for "javascript benchmark", 
"firefox benchmark" and stuff like that and take all tests you find. 
Windows Firefox is always faster.  Even running it in Wine under Linux 
(though slower than native Windows) is much faster than the Linux version.

Firefox would never get away with this kind of performance with Windows 
users and it would never become so popular as it is now.  Sometimes we 
just have to face the fact that for Mozilla, we're second-class citizens 
when compared to Windows users.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Why does emerge want to downgrade firefox/xul-runner?

[Graham Murray]

Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> writes:

> I haven't really paid much attention to start-up times, but
> page loads in 3.5 feel a fair bit faster. I've also noticed
> that 3.5 doesn't pause repeatedly while I'm typing a URL like
> 3.0 used to.

Page loads are faster, but page scrolling of some pages (eg slashdot
articles) can be very slow and suffer from pauses. Also it may not pause
when typing URLs but it does (for me) when entering text into the search
box on YouTube.