RFC: What to do with Mozilla

[Philip Paeps]

On 2003-10-15 14:12:44 (-0400), Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> As some of you may be aware, Mozilla 1.5 was released today (along with
> Firebird and Thunderbird updates which will be handled soon).  The question
> is, what do we do with Mozilla 1.4.x?  Do you resurrect mozilla-vendor to
> hold 1.4.x for a while, or do we just update www/mozilla to 1.5, and say "to
> hell" with 1.4.x?  Note, 1.6a is due out shortly as well, and mozilla-devel
> will be updated to that.

Perhaps we should look at Mozilla more as a 'collection of things', much like
GNOME than as simply several different unrelated things?

We could make 'www/mozilla' build the browser-bits, with knobs for the user to
say what browser they want:

  WITH_MOZILLA_FB --> Mozilla Firebird
  WITH_MOZILLA_14 --> Latest on the 1.4 branch
  WITH_MOZILLA_15 --> Latest on the 1.5 branch
  WITH_MOZILLA_16 --> Latest on the 1.6 branch

Default would be 'the most stable', which currently would probably have to be
the 1.4 branch.  So if a user were to compile www/mozilla or pkg_add it, he
would get a stable browser, as expected.

A nice way to sort out dependencies would be a USE_MOZILLA variable, much like
the USE_GNOME variable for ports to say what bits or what version of Mozilla
they want.  We could use pkgnamesuffixes to deal with different versions of
Mozilla being installed (each in different places, of course) and a 'mozilla'
symlink pointing to the binary the user expects to be his browser.

Time for a bsd.mozilla.mk to deal with the magic?

 - Philip

-- 
Philip Paeps                                          Please don't CC me, I am
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  An original idea can never emerge from committee
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