[CentOS] Firefox 46.0 fails on CentOS 6.7 due to GTK3 requirement

[Phelps, Matthew]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:

> On 04/27/2016 09:23 AM, James Pearson wrote:
> > Phil Wyett wrote:
> >> On Wed, 2016-04-27 at 08:27 -0400, Phelps, Matthew wrote:
> >>> The latest version of firefox, 46.0 requires GTK3 and so it fails on
> >>> CentOS
> >>> 6.7.
> >>>
> >>> I know there is the ESR release supplied by upstream, but that is
> >>> based on
> >>> version 38. We have regularly installed the Mozilla "Linux" version of
> >>> Firefox in a central location for our users, and this has worked just
> >>> fine
> >>> until 46.0. (I note from
> >>> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ that even
> >>> that ESR
> >>> release is due to stop being supported soon).
> >>>
> >>> I filed a bugzilla report at
> >>> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267815. If this matters
> to
> >>> you, please consider tagging onto that bug.
> >>>
> >>> Yes, yes we have to upgrade to CentOS 7. But in our shop, the amount of
> >>> work required to get this done is huge, and won't happen soon.
> >>>
> >>> The whole idea of using RHEL/CentOS is to have a stable, supported
> >>> version
> >>> for a long period of time. How can we do this if even a web browser
> >>> won't
> >>> work?
> >>>
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> The latest firefox ESR for RHEL/CentOS 5, 6 and 7 is 45.1. That version
> >> should appear in CentOS updates when Mr Hughes has worked his magic.
> >>
> >> With 46 not being an ESR and not released for RHEL/CentOS, it is not
> >> really something most here would be too worried about.
> >
> > Mozilla still (currently) support GTK2 as a build option - so if want to
> > run Firefox 46 (and above) on CentOS 6, then you will need to build it
> > from source
> >
> > You might be able to start with the 45.1 SRPM and hack the spec file to
> > build 46.0 ...
>
> Or just use the ESR version that Red Hat releases :)
>
> ESR is updated at intervals, and it went from 38 to 45, will go up again
> in 6 or 7 releases again.
>
> Things move on (like firefox) while enterprise distros purposely have a
> slower cadence.  Fedora has GTK3 and all the other bells and whistles.
> If that is the type of cadence you want, Fedora is an excellent distro.
>
> I should have the CentOS-6 (and CentOS-5) version of Firefox 45 out in a
> couple of minutes .. currently building metadata and testing them on
> https://ci.centos.org/
>
> CentOS-7 version of Firefox 45 was released yesterday.
>
>
>
Thanks Johnny. Getting the ESR release up to 45 for CO6 is good enough for
us while we work on CO7.

I didn't realize the ESR would ever move off of 38.x.


-- 
Matt Phelps
System Administrator, Computation Facility
Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
mphelps at cfa.harvard.edu, http://www.cfa.harvard.edu