05.09
Today I’ve had some issues dealing with the Ubuntu Mozilla libraries, specifically libnss en libnspr. At work I need to backport gfs2-tools from Ubuntu Feisty to Debian Etch. I had quite some issues because Debian puts the include files in a different location than Ubuntu. Ubuntu puts everything in a firefox subdir within the /usr/include directory. Now at first that seems very logical, but upon further consideration it’s actually not. The Debian folks hit the nail on the head because libnss and libnspr are not exclusively used by Mozilla (Firefox) anymore. For example Pidgin (the Instant Messenger Formally Known As GAIM) uses libnss to securely connect to the MSN servers. While trying to port Pidgin from Debian to Ubuntu, I got the package without NSS support because the includes couldn’t be located, and thus broken MSN support. Very frustrating indeed.
I wonder whether this has anything to do with the Mozilla branding/licensing stuff. It so, let them go to hell! I’d prefer a cold weasel over a hot fox anyday if that means I can get proper packages.
