Impossible to install libsmjs-dev with firefox present

Is there any progress on this? I'll need to be developing with libsmjs soon and I'd rather not have to have it installed unmanaged if possible.

Yes, this is quite troublesome issue. Hopefully we'll get some insightful information why Depends are set as they are before Edgy is released.

Setting the milestone to 6.10. libnspr4 (firefox) uses unversioned sonames, and conflicts with libnspr4-dev:

/usr/lib/libnspr4.so
/usr/lib/libplc4.so
/usr/lib/libplds4.so

libebook1.2-9, libedataserverui1.2-8 and firefox depend on libnspr4, so basically you cannot do any development using libnspr4-dev and libxul-dev in edgy (same with libnss3 and libnss3-dev).

Proposed solution for edgy+1: build firefox using the xulrunner -dev packages
Proposed solution for edgy: change the sonames for the libraries in libnspr4 and libnss3 from *.so to *.so.0ff

Why is libnspr-dev (from firefox) not the answer to this problem ? That's the -dev package corresponding to libnspr4.

Chris, does libnspr-dev not work for you?

libsmjs depends on libnspr4, not libnspr - which is what causes the conflict.

oh, and libnspr4-dev corresponds to libnspr4, not libnspr-dev; which corresponds to libnspr - as would be expected

Chris Lord writes ("[Bug 57161] Re: Impossible to install libsmjs-dev with firefox present"):
> libsmjs depends on libnspr4, not libnspr - which is what causes the
> conflict.

Yes, I know. I am suggesting that libsmjs should be changed to depend
on libnspr. This entire stack should be using the firefox-provided
libraries, including the -dev libraries.

Chris Lord writes ("[Bug 57161] Re: Impossible to install libsmjs-dev with firefox present"):
> oh, and libnspr4-dev corresponds to libnspr4, not libnspr-dev; which
> corresponds to libnspr - as would be expected

Which package name to use (libfoo-dev or libfoo<version>-dev) depends
on whether it is possible to install both at once and have
applications choose between them at build tim. In this case, this is
not possible.

Ian.

smjs gets built as part of xulrunner I think, which explains why it depends on libnspr4 - Could the libnspr from firefox be changed to provide libnspr4 perhaps? Or perhaps just go with the solution Matthias Klose suggested?

Chris Lord writes ("[Bug 57161] Re: Impossible to install libsmjs-dev with firefox present"):
> smjs gets built as part of xulrunner I think, which explains why it
> depends on libnspr4

Would you please explain _why my proposed solution is no good_ ?

> - Could the libnspr from firefox be changed to
> provide libnspr4 perhaps? Or perhaps just go with the solution Matthias
> Klose suggested?

We are not going to change the firefox package in this area now.

Ian.

Sorry, I must've missed something - What is your proposed solution? That it be built against libnspr from firefox? What with not being the maintainer of this (or any other) package, I've no idea if that's possible or not... I'll take a look at it when/if I have some spare time.

What might be sensible would be to build libsmjs from its own source tarball, as it was before, instead of xulrunner?

Chris Lord writes ("[Bug 57161] Re: Impossible to install libsmjs-dev with firefox present"):
> Sorry, I must've missed something - What is your proposed solution? That
> it be built against libnspr from firefox?

That, or build it against it own but link it against the firefox one
at runtime. (This latter might not work.)

> What might be sensible would be to build libsmjs from its own source
> tarball, as it was before, instead of xulrunner?

That's another sensible option.

Ian.

Removing milestone; I will not accept a firefox upload to fix a problem which affects an universe package at this point; sorry. Please revisit for edgy+1.

edgy+1 here, revisiting.

The issue is not really about libsmjs1[-dev] (which is obsolete) but libmozjs0d-dev.

OK, do what ever needs to be done, please :-)

I **need** spidermonkey to build the last avidemux2.3 preview. It has a couple of __very__ nice features I'd like to test against my DivX player

No-one has come up with a clear explanation of why this cannot or should not be fixed by xulrunner using firefox's nspr. I think that's the right answer, not any change to firefox, so I'm rejecting the "task" against firefox.

Output of aptitude below, Feisty system up to date as of Feb 1st, 2007.

freddy@omicron:~$ sudo aptitude install libsmjs-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
  firefox
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  libmozjs-dev libnspr4-dev
The following packages will be automatically REMOVED:
  libnspr4
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libmozjs-dev libnspr4-dev libsmjs-dev
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libnspr4
0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 410kB of archives. After unpacking 1823kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  firefox: Depends: libnspr4 (>= 2:1.firefox1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.5-0ubuntu6.06.1) but it is not installable
Resolving dependencies...
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
firefox
firefox-launchpad-plugin
gramps
yelp

Has there been any progress on this? It's almost time to release feisty and meanwhile there's no way of installing a JavaScript interpreter/library without breaking ubuntu-desktop and the browser.

Is Ubuntu going to get rid of libnspr4 like debian did? If so, when? If not, is there any workaround?

I'm glad to see someone has posted this, and quite a while ago at that. It's *still* not fixed; I'm running feisty, and here is the story:

I wanted to install pidgin, the chat software previously known as gaim. Well, it's not in the repositories, go figure, so I compile it from source... no good, I didn't have SSL. Gee, shoulda looked at the ./configure output :)

OK, so I apt-get installed both libnspr4-dev and libnss3-dev. Both of these were a problem, because to do so it uninstalled firefox! How great is that? Again, I didn't look carefully, since I just assumed I wouldn't have any issues - all I did was install two dev versions of libs I already had.

Anyway, when I went to reinstall firefox, the conflict was clear:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  firefox libnspr4 libnss3

I'm not good enough to fix these things ubuntu-wide, but maybe someone that is could just make firefox depend on either these libs *or* their -dev versions? I would imagine that the -dev would do the same stuff and more, and this shouldn't be a huge issue.

On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 05:12:10AM -0000, ortron wrote:
> I'm glad to see someone has posted this, and quite a while ago at that.
> It's *still* not fixed; I'm running feisty, and here is the story:
>
> I wanted to install pidgin, the chat software previously known as gaim.
> Well, it's not in the repositories, go figure, so I compile it from
> source... no good, I didn't have SSL. Gee, shoulda looked at the
> ./configure output :)
>
> OK, so I apt-get installed both libnspr4-dev and libnss3-dev. Both of
> these were a problem, because to do so it uninstalled firefox! How
> great is that? Again, I didn't look carefully, since I just assumed I
> wouldn't have any issues - all I did was install two dev versions of
> libs I already had.
>
> Anyway, when I went to reinstall firefox, the conflict was clear:
>
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
> firefox libnspr4 libnss3
>
> I'm not good enough to fix these things ubuntu-wide, but maybe someone
> that is could just make firefox depend on either these libs *or* their
> -dev versions? I would imagine that the -dev would do the same stuff
> and more, and this shouldn't be a huge issue.
>

You are on gutsy, right?

if your firefox is the latest then you won't get this problem. Try to
dist-upgrade first. Then install libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev.

 - Alexander

I could install in gutsy, closing.