VDQ : Firefox, Fedora -- and yum?

Paul Howarth paul at city-fan.org
Fri Jan 20 11:19:59 UTC 2006


Beartooth wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:37:44 +0000, Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
> 
>>Beartooth wrote:
> 
> [....]
> 
>>>Need these things be?
>>>
>>>Is there a way I've missed to make "yum update firefox" work? Is there
>>>hope it will in FC5 -- or even FC6?
>>
>>"yum update firefox" works fine for me on FC4.
>>
>>Is the problem that you are seeing that firefox is not being updated to
>>version 1.5? The reason for that is that no official Fedora package for
>>Firefox 1.5 on FC4 has been released (at least not yet). That's why yum
>>doesn't pick it up.
> 
> 
> Oho! and also aha! So there *is* hope; I kinda thunkit ... Many thanks!
> [....] 
> 
>>As for why there isn't a Firefox 1.5 upgrade for FC4, I don't know the
>>answer.
> 
> 
> Gee, and I'd've sworn I saw some ballyhoo weeks and weeks ago to the
> effect that 1.5 was a big security fix. Worse, I *thought* what I read
> said it wasn't for once just another MS problem, but something *in*
> Firefox. Maybe I better go on avoiding it a while yet. What I have
> is 1.0.7. Thanks!
> 
> Btw, in case the security hole does depend on MS -- is it worth installing
> a passel of extensions, and counting on 1.5 when it eventually appears to
> adopt and update them? If not, and if 1.5 is anywhere near the offing,
> I'll just wait, and do it after I get that. (I've been running that
> browser since about phoenix 0.4, and like it -- with lots of extensions;
> but I've had to go get them over again from scratch at least once, and
> life is too short to do it again without need.)

If there is a real security issue with firefox 1.0.x (I don't know if 
there is or not), I'd expect an FC4 update that either:

(a) updated to a later version that fixed the problem, or
(b) included a backported fix in the existing version

The choice between the two largely depends on what the impact of a 
significant version upgrade would be on users/other applications that 
depend on the package. If there are significant plugin incompatibilities 
between firefox 1.0.x and 1.5.x then I'd expect the second option to be 
chosen if possible.

Paul.




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