Subject: Re: [bug#74790] [PATCH] gnu: librewolf: Support Guix icecat browser extensions.

From: Ian Eure <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:38:54 -0800

Hi Hilton,

The patches look good to me, thank you for taking this on!  How to 
handle browser extensions is a subject that’s been on my mind 
intermittently, so it’s great to see effort in that direction.

I think it might be non-obvious that IceCat packages affect 
non-IceCat browsers.  I’d really like to have a solid facility for 
managing extensions across the different Firefox forks, either 
with generic "browser-extension-ublock-origin" packages; or 
something similar to the Common Lisp setup, where 
implementation-specific package variants can be derived from a 
canonical one.  I lean somewhat towards the latter approach, since 
I think it provides a cleaner way of handling differences across 
browsers.  Given the different release cadences, I think it makes 
sense to abstract over the differences in the build tooling rather 
than patching the browsers to get consistent behavior.

To be clear here, these patches don’t have to wait for that; I’m 
+1 on pushing as-is.  But I think we should have a more explicit 
system for handling browser extension packages.

Thanks,
  -- Ian

Hilton Chain <[email-masked]> writes:

> * gnu/packages/patches/librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch: New 
> file.
> * gnu/local.mk (dist_patch_DATA): Regisiter it.
> * gnu/packages/librewolf.scm (make-librewolf-source)[patches]: 
> Add it along with
> torbrowser-compare-paths.patch.
> (librewolf)[native-search-paths]: Add ICECAT_SYSTEM_DIR.
>
> Change-Id: I8609d25a7e2725ad94ab257d720326639eb06778
> ---
>
> Reused torbrowser-compare-paths.patch, mind it for future 
> updates. :)
>
>  gnu/local.mk                                  |  1 +
>  gnu/packages/librewolf.scm                    | 11 +++++-
>  .../librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch       | 37 
>  +++++++++++++++++++
>  3 files changed, 48 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>  create mode 100644 
>  gnu/packages/patches/librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch
>
> diff --git a/gnu/local.mk b/gnu/local.mk
> index 2d85c485f6..0faa3a70a9 100644
> --- a/gnu/local.mk
> +++ b/gnu/local.mk
> @@ -1635,6 +1635,7 @@ dist_patch_DATA =						\
>    %D%/packages/patches/libgpg-error-hurd64.patch		\
>    %D%/packages/patches/libguestfs-syms.patch            	\
>    %D%/packages/patches/libobjc2-unbundle-robin-map.patch	\
> +  %D%/packages/patches/librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch	\
>    %D%/packages/patches/libvirt-add-install-prefix.patch	\
>    %D%/packages/patches/libziparchive-add-includes.patch		\
>    %D%/packages/patches/lightdm-arguments-ordering.patch		\
> diff --git a/gnu/packages/librewolf.scm 
> b/gnu/packages/librewolf.scm
> index 5d432cfad8..7ea14c9182 100644
> --- a/gnu/packages/librewolf.scm
> +++ b/gnu/packages/librewolf.scm
> @@ -188,7 +188,11 @@ (define* (make-librewolf-source #:key 
> version firefox-hash librewolf-hash)
>                 (invoke "make" "all")
>                 (copy-file (string-append "librewolf-" #$version
>                                           ".source.tar.gz")
> -                          #$output))))))))
> +                          #$output)))))
> +      (patches
> +       (search-patches
> +        "torbrowser-compare-paths.patch"
> +        "librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch")))))
>
>  ;; Define the versions of rust needed to build librewolf, 
>  trying to match
>  ;; upstream.  See the file taskcluster/ci/toolchain/rust.yml at
> @@ -705,6 +709,11 @@ (define-public librewolf
>                           rust-cbindgen-0.26
>                           which
>                           yasm))
> +    (native-search-paths
> +     (list (search-path-specification
> +            (variable "ICECAT_SYSTEM_DIR")
> +            (separator #f)              ;single entry
> +            (files '("lib/icecat")))))
>      (home-page "https://librewolf.net/")
>      (synopsis
>       "Custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security 
>       and freedom")
> diff --git 
> a/gnu/packages/patches/librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch 
> b/gnu/packages/patches/librewolf-use-system-wide-dir.patch
> new file mode 100644
> index 0000000000..c8a4d8cb12
>