firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

graysky · 2010-07-17 20:55:27

I just happened upon Ranguvar's firefox-pgo in the AUR. It builds flawlessly with makepkg on my system and the installed binary feels faster than the one from the standard package. I have two naive questions:

1) I realize that it contains the same base src as the standard firefox package, but there are a number of patches the PKGBUILD applies. Any potential security concerns of using this build over the standard one?

2) One only has to build the package once, right? I have been reading about pgo and from what I understand, the package is built once, the user actually bangs on the software while other executables monitor how it behaves to some log files, then, at some point in the future, the user re-builds the package and these log files are used to rebuild the it with user-specific optimizations. Do I have that right and if so, how does one do it with this PKGBUILD?

Thanks for the clarification.

heftig · 2010-07-17 23:10:15

2) Profiling is done automatically as part of the build. No need to rebuild it later.

toxygen · 2010-07-18 06:55:53

as heftig noted, profiling is done during the build process. See the comments in PKGBUILD for answers to this and your other questions. i also suggest looking through the pgo thread. lots of good info there.

some of the patches are similar to the firefox build in extra, some are related to pgo-build, and some are extra patches included by the package maintainers, that seem cosmetic or to optimize specific things. you can always read through the package files to see what they actually do (or see the comments in the PKGBUILD).

as for security, some of us think the pgo-build is more secure due to avoiding certain call-home things that firefox does in a standard build (such as safe-browsing calling home to google), but it does require you to be more aware of what extensions you install and what webpages you visit. again, this info can be found in the thread above or in the PKGBUILD.

it is fun to build though, and does have speed improvements over the standard firefox, especialy when you go into firefox-pgo-beta.

Last edited by toxygen (2010-07-18 06:57:07)

R00KIE · 2010-07-18 10:44:14

A bit off topic but can't you just disable the call home feature of the firefox in [extra] if you go to Preferences -> Security and uncheck "Block reported attack sites" and "Block reported web forgeries"?

The default is on but if you worry about it I guess you can always disable it, much like the search suggestions.

toxygen · 2010-07-18 18:13:13

yes, you can disable some of the call-home features through both preferences and about:config (i forget the exact settings), but without disabling safe browsing in mozconfig during build, there's always some leftover. in other words, it's a bigger pain in the ass if you go through settings, and as i found out (there's a thread about it somewhere), there's one hidden call-home connection which was never disabled until doing the mozconfig route.

R00KIE · 2010-07-18 19:52:12

I'm surprised by this, I guess this is a "feature" they don't plan to advertise , it's always good to know this things.

karol · 2010-07-18 19:54:27

R00KIE wrote:

I'm surprised by this, I guess this is a "feature" they don't plan to advertise , it's always good to know this things.

Oh, they do advertise it - it's called security / antiphishing.

R00KIE · 2010-07-19 22:12:33

karol wrote:

R00KIE wrote:
I'm surprised by this, I guess this is a "feature" they don't plan to advertise , it's always good to know this things.
Oh, they do advertise it - it's called security / antiphishing.

Well, yes but they also mention that if you don't want that you can go to the options and disable it.

At least the info about going to the options and disable some of this is dead easy to find, what I meant is that they don't advertise the phone home features that are harder to turn off, such as the one that apparently requires a recompile, at least I wasn't aware of it and it seems I wasn't the only one.

graysky · 2010-07-19 22:30:02

Do we have a list of these in the mozconfig we can edit to disable?

toxygen · 2010-07-20 13:43:51

graysky wrote:

Do we have a list of these in the mozconfig we can edit to disable?

off the top of my head i think:

ac_add_options --disable-safe-browsing
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter --disable-parental-controls
ac_add_options --disable-installer --disable-updater

are the main ones. if you go to the mozilla developer center, the mozconfig options are not very detailed in description, they cover a few ones, then dump the rest with little or no details on what they're for. and some are missing entirely.

oh and if you're really not a fan of being tracked on your laptop, and dont arent into geocaching or geo trolling or whatever that "hobby" is
--disable-necko-wifi

and remove wireless-tools from the PKGBUILD build depends. this is used as a poor man's gps by tracking wireless networks around your computer and triangulating to your position from there. i'm still not sure why it's enabled by default, but oh well

Arch Linux

#1 2010-07-17 20:55:27

firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#2 2010-07-17 23:10:15

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#3 2010-07-18 06:55:53

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#4 2010-07-18 10:44:14

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#5 2010-07-18 18:13:13

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#6 2010-07-18 19:52:12

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#7 2010-07-18 19:54:27

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#8 2010-07-19 22:12:33

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#9 2010-07-19 22:30:02

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

#10 2010-07-20 13:43:51

Re: firefox-pgo in AUR - several naive questions

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