Re: problem with xulrunner on ubuntu

[Brian Candler <B....@pobox.com>]

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 09:41:16PM +0100, Fabio Forno wrote:
> I'm using  couchdb with ubuntu and I've manually compiled it adding
> the paths to the correct xulrunner libs ( /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.0.15/
> ) and it works fine.
> The problem is that sometimes during normal distro updates ubuntu can
> changes the minor number of the lib (just moved to .16), breaking
> everything for couchdb. Is there anybody already coping with this
> problem or solutions around? I know that this is problem is more
> related to ubuntu, since they should also make some stable symlink
> available, but I think since it mainly affects couchdb somebody may
> already have a solution

1. If you are using ubuntu 'server' edition (and haven't installed Firefox),
   you can just install and use libmozjs-dev. Job done. You can even take
   the binary here and copy it to a 'desktop' machine which has libmozjs.

2. On an ubuntu-desktop machine, you can rather painfully install
   libmozjs-dev (which will uninstall a whole load of stuff), then build
   couchdb, then reinstall the affected stuff which will uninstall
   libmozjs-dev. This is fine, because to run the binary you only need
   libmozjs, not libmozjs-dev, and there's no conflict on libmozjs.

3. It's probably possible to build couchdb inside a chroot environment, e.g.
   using fakeroot, where libmozjs-dev has been installed. I haven't worked
   out the details of setting up such an environment yet.

4. Otherwise, you just need to keep an eye on when xulrunner changes its
   tiny version number, and rebuild couchdb :-(

I'm using (1) on a production box, and (4) on a dev desktop box. I've also
previously used (2) on a laptop running Xubuntu, because xubuntu-desktop is
much lighter than ubuntu-desktop so you don't end up uninstalling all that
much.

Remember to vote on
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xulrunner-1.9.1/+bug/486079
if you haven't done so already. ("This bug affects me")

Regards,

Brian.