Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Please package Iceweasel-UXP, a Firefox fork maintained as part
of the Hyperbola distribution [1].
[1] https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:project:iceweasel-uxp
I suppose that begs for an explanation, now doesn’t it?
While I’m not in position to judge on the pro’s and cons. of
various extension interfaces contemporary full-weight browsers
implement (I’ve contemplated writing a rather trivial Firefox
extension several years ago, and was never able to figure out
why they seem to demand a whole directory structure for what’s
ought to be a few dozen LoC), I note that several Firefox
extensions that I’ve used pretty much died out as the result of
the transition from XUL to the newer WebExtensions API. E. g.:
• xul-ext-classic-theme-restorer – the author has claimed that
it cannot be implemented as a WebExtension and suggested that
userChrome.js is modified instead (say, [2]); unless I be
mistaken, this requires restarting Firefox for the edits to
take effect, which makes customization far more cumbersome
that it used to be, and that (IMO) it has any right to be;
• xul-ext-certificatepatrol – likewise, but no alternative
suggested [3];
• xul-ext-zotero – has been replaced by the zotero-standalone
package.
Of course, there’re several other free XUL (UXP) browsers [4],
such as Pale Moon (RFP Bug#780379.) Unfortunately, its
upstream’s insistence on embedding a number of libraries (with
browser-specific patches applied to them) will likely make it a
major headache to the Debian Security Team. I suppose Basilisk
(by the same team) also has some of this problem.
To conclude, as a long-time user of GNU Emacs, I believe that
having a full-weight browser that offers Emacs-class extensibility
will be beneficial to Debian users. So far as I can tell,
Iceweasel-UXP is the closest option to this goal there is.
[2]
https://web.archive.org/web/20171226180650/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/
[3] http://patrol.psyced.org/
[4] http://thereisonlyxul.org/
--
FSF associate member #7257 http://am-1.org/~ivan/
