Farewell to Iceape [Debian Security Advisory]

[pcalvert]

FYI:
DSA-2819-1 iceape -- end-of-life announcement for iceape

It looks like Iceape has basically been abandoned. See:
http://packages.debian.org/search?keywo ... ection=all

Those version numbers haven't changed in months.

[mor]

It seems like I only needed to wait just a little longer before starting the thread about Iceape's status:

Well, good riddance my dear beloved Iceape.

Thanks pcalvert for the announcement.

[llivv]

if you look here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... htly/2013/
the last nightly build for linux
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... 86.tar.bz2
was july 26
the last aroura channel builds for linux were
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... 86.tar.bz2
&&
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... 64.tar.bz2
the last build for mac was sometime in aug
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... US.mac.dmg
and the last build for windows was sometime in dec
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... ral-trunk/
on dec 18 it looks to me like mozilla stopped building seamonkey binaries.
but the archive now is a bit sporadic with windows builds and or changelogs.
after dec 18 there are still changelogs in the trunk and aurora channels.
I'll assume that relates to the source, which ever file(s) that may consist of.

[mor]

I'm not sure of what you mean.

[llivv]

mozilla is following the mobile explosion.
But they also have a ton of old orphaned projects besides seamonkey.
So you're not the only one who's lost an old friend along the way.
see:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/
for the full list ( afaict )

[mor]

Oh I now think I know what you meant.
Yes, many projects have been lost in the Mozilla world, especially after the advent of Firefox (I'm not resenting this, just acknowledging it), but we are mourning the loss of Iceape the debian derivative, not Seamonkey.

Seamonkey seems to me to be very much alive and on pace with Firefox. I once was far more involved with Mozilla and Mozilla related products and their development, now I have definitely lost contact and I'm not even reading the mailing lists anymore, but unless you have specific news of official statements about the discontinuation of Seamonkey, I think we can all look at this as a simple debian-related loss, rather than, say, things like the death of Camino.

Bye

[epp]

if you look here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... htly/2013/
the last nightly build for linux
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... 86.tar.bz2
was july 26
the last aroura channel builds for linux were
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... 86.tar.bz2
&&
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... 64.tar.bz2
the last build for mac was sometime in aug
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... US.mac.dmg
and the last build for windows was sometime in dec
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... ral-trunk/
on dec 18 it looks to me like mozilla stopped building seamonkey binaries.
but the archive now is a bit sporadic with windows builds and or changelogs.
after dec 18 there are still changelogs in the trunk and aurora channels.
I'll assume that relates to the source, which ever file(s) that may consist of.

All one has to do is go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/releases and you can get the latest version of SeaMonkey, currently 2.23. Once you select the version number, the x86_64 file is in /contrib

It was easier for me to simply extract the .tar.bz2 file into a sub-directory I created under my home directory and run it from there each time. Works perfectly.

Hope this information helps.

[stevepusser]

We've been rebundling the Mozilla binary releases into deb files for the MEPIS repo, if you want a download and click install: http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testr ... seamonkey/

Since they all install the same files, any mcr version is pretty much the same. The program is installed into /opt/seamonkey, but no link is created in /usr/bin, to avoid the problems with IceApe. If you want a symlink in /usr/bin, the command would be

Code: Select all

su -c 'ln -s /opt/seamonkey/seamonkey /usr/bin/seamonkey'

This puts a link to the launcher script in /usr/bin, in your PATH, so that "seamonkey" can launch from a terminal.

[pcalvert]

Hi Steve,

We've been rebundling the Mozilla binary releases into deb files for the MEPIS repo, if you want a download and click install: http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testr ... seamonkey/

Since they all install the same files, any mcr version is pretty much the same.

I saw those the other day and was thinking of asking you about them. Why are there several different mcr versions?

Phil

[stevepusser]

We are still building packages, if possible, for the Lenny-based MEPIS 8.5, Squeeze-based M11, and Wheezy-based MEPIS 12. The way the repo system works, you dump them all in the same directory, but each release only sees the versions meant for them. Debian works the same way, if you look inside a repo, you see packages for stable, testing, and unstable all together. Usually it's not a good idea to mix distributions, but these Seamonkey packages all install the same exact files from Mozilla. Unlike Mint (I think), we install the 64-bit build on 64-bit, too.

If you poke around the repo, you'll be able to find the Firefox and Thunderbird repackaged from Mozilla, too.

[epp]

I like the idea of a Debian-based SeaMonkey package, but if the current version is downloaded from Mepis and installed on a Debian system, once the next version (2.24?) is released, what would be the upgrade process? Would 2.24 automatically upgrade 2.23? And once installed, could it be launched from the desktop instead of from within a terminal?

[pcalvert]

I like the idea of a Debian-based SeaMonkey package, but if the current version is downloaded from Mepis and installed on a Debian system, once the next version (2.24?) is released, what would be the upgrade process? Would 2.24 automatically upgrade 2.23? And once installed, could it be launched from the desktop instead of from within a terminal?

I believe the answer to your questions is "yes." Of course, that's assuming that things work the way they should, and that the MEPIS Community repository has been added to sources.list,
or to a file (e.g., mepis.list) in /etc/apt/sources.list.d

Phil

[stevepusser]

This is kind of a belated answer, but I try to get the new version into the repo within a day or two of the release. You can use the Seamonkey built-in updater if you get the update notice from Seamonkey if you run the program as root just to do the update. Then when the next update rolls in from the repo, it will just "update in place"--actually just replacing files with the same version, but you'd be covered for that short period of time if it's a critical security issue.

I don't add a link to the launcher in /usr/bin because Iceape already does that, and I don't want a conflict with that package...some users asked to have both installed at once. Since Iceape is getting ancient, I'm thinking of changing that.

[DebbyIan]

Seamonkey is a great browser. Only thing is, it's too similar to Firefox.
I see no point in Debian dropping the package Iceape if it continues to be developed by Mozilla.