xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

Inxsible · 2011-06-22 14:51:30

since the upgrade to firefox 5, xulrunner shows up as an orphan on my machines.

Did firefox get rid of the xulrunner dependency? To be sure, I uninstalled xulrunner and sure enough firefox works without it as well. I still haven't removed it from my cache in the unlikely event that something goes wrong.

I have tried looking around, but I didn't find any mozilla site which explains why and how they removed this dependency. This would mean there was a lot changed between FF4 and FF5 as xulrunner was a FF dependency since a long time.

ataraxia · 2011-06-22 15:56:00

I'm curious about this also. I know that the use of a separate xulrunner and a small firefox package built against it is actually something done by the Arch devs (and some other distro packagers), not an upstream recommendation. Mozilla never really approved of building it in two pieces like that.

It would be nice to hear from heftig why he made this change. There was nothing on the mailing lists that I could find. I think it's a win, as it appears to be a bit smaller overall, and I'm sure it's easier for him to maintain.

mhertz · 2011-06-22 16:00:58

I _believe_ it's because of the use of pgo optimization, which needs firefox and xulrunner to not be independant...

wonder · 2011-06-22 16:08:56

mostly is because mozilla never supported shared xul + firefox and we had a lot of troubles making it work for firefox 4 already, using a huge patch from bugtracker. next is http://lwn.net/Articles/436412/rss

mhertz · 2011-06-22 16:34:17

Oh, I apologise for posting wrong info then!

Btw, I got that impression from the comments section of the firefox-pgo-4.0.1 aur package, which also is xulrunner-independant, and where Ranguvar stated:

As far as I know, XULRunner cannot be separate from Firefox for PGO building. But if you manage it, please do tell

Again, sorry about that!

WorMzy · 2011-06-22 18:45:08

I'm happy with the change; that's a 85MB package that I can cut out of my system.

Hyugga · 2011-06-23 04:48:50

Almost two days using Firefox 5 without having xulrunner installed, not a single problem yet.

litemotiv · 2011-06-23 06:47:27

Hyugga wrote:

Almost two days using Firefox 5 without having xulrunner installed, not a single problem yet.

That's strange, are you sure you removed it completely?

Army · 2011-06-23 06:54:36

Just look at the filesize of the new firefox in the repos. It used to be very small, because almost everything was included in the xulrunner package. Now firefox is much bigger, so xulrunner must be included in it.
The only thing I'm wondering is, that the filesizes don't add up. Old firefox + xulrunner is much bigger than new firefox. Where does that come from?

litemotiv · 2011-06-23 07:02:57

Army wrote:

Just look at the filesize of the new firefox in the repos. It used to be very small, because almost everything was included in the xulrunner package. Now firefox is much bigger, so xulrunner must be included in it.
The only thing I'm wondering is, that the filesizes don't add up. Old firefox + xulrunner is much bigger than new firefox. Where does that come from?

The 'new' Firefox is completely binary compiled, where Xulrunner is more like a generic 'script engine' for running XUL code. Think of it as using the Java-JRE, when you can also compile a program into a much smaller static binary.

tomk · 2011-06-23 08:57:53

litemotiv wrote:

That's strange, are you sure you removed it completely?

Why is it strange? Working fine for me too.

Army · 2011-06-23 09:11:04

Thanks litemotiv, that definitely explains it

litemotiv · 2011-06-23 10:07:35

tomk wrote:

Why is it strange? Working fine for me too.

When everything is working correctly on Arch, you must be doing something wrong, right?

hellnest · 2011-06-23 11:48:54

@litemotiv
lolz, that's damn right

No xulrunner, everything work well:)

Hyugga · 2011-06-23 15:32:58

find -name *ulrunner* throws no results...
I think is removed completly...
And have some sort of "KDE integration" as well, opening some files with default KDE apps like Ark.

orph · 2011-06-23 16:10:49

Still, xulrunner is needed for gjs (Javascript Bindings for GNOME), which is required for GNOME3's gnome-shell.

Anyhow, I wonder where xulrunner's 87MB comes from.

wonder · 2011-06-23 16:22:12

orph wrote:

Still, xulrunner is needed for gjs (Javascript Bindings for GNOME), which is required for GNOME3's gnome-shell.
Anyhow, I wonder where xulrunner's 87MB comes from.

for gnome 3.2 gnome-shell will use js 1.8.5 which is newly release spidermonkey javascript from mozilla

GI Jack · 2011-07-06 01:52:43

orph wrote:

Anyhow, I wonder where xulrunner's 87MB comes from.

this is great. firefox now takes up 23 MB opposed to chrome's 75.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-22 14:51:30

xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#2 2011-06-22 15:56:00

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#3 2011-06-22 16:00:58

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#4 2011-06-22 16:08:56

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#5 2011-06-22 16:34:17

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#6 2011-06-22 18:45:08

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#7 2011-06-23 04:48:50

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#8 2011-06-23 06:47:27

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#9 2011-06-23 06:54:36

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#10 2011-06-23 07:02:57

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#11 2011-06-23 08:57:53

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#12 2011-06-23 09:11:04

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#13 2011-06-23 10:07:35

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#14 2011-06-23 11:48:54

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#15 2011-06-23 15:32:58

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#16 2011-06-23 16:10:49

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#17 2011-06-23 16:22:12

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

#18 2011-07-06 01:52:43

Re: xulrunner no longer a dependency for Firefox

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