Firefox Langpacks Subpackage

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Firefox langpacks, which have been bundled in the Fedora firefox base package until now, will be moved to a firefox-langpacks subpackage.

Owner

Name: Jens Petersen
Email: <petersen@redhat.com>
Name: Martin Stransky
Email: <mstransky@redhat.com>

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora Linux 37
Last updated: 2022-06-27
FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The firefox packages carries many langpacks containing translations and other localization data for different countries and languages. This Change will move them to a separate subpackage pulled in as a weak dependency by the base package.

Feedback

Initial discussion: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2035178

Benefit to Fedora

This makes Fedora a little more modular: going forward it will be possible to install firefox without having to have all the langpacks installed too.

Scope

Proposal owners:
- Update Rawhide firefox to add the langpacks subpackage (PR)

Other developers: none

Release engineering: #10858

Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Alignment with Objectives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

When upgrading to Fedora 37, firefox's new weak dependency will pull in the firefox-langpacks subpackage, so users should not experience any change by default.

How To Test

install firefox and check that firefox-langpacks gets pulled in
test that firefox's langpacks are functioning normally
test upgrade from F36 to F37 and ensure that the firefox-langpacks subpackage gets installed.

User Experience

Users will have a new firefox-langpacks subpackage installed by default. If they don't require localization they can remove it and benefit from lighter firefox updates and save about 50MB of diskspace.

Dependencies

None

Contingency Plan

Contingency mechanism: proposal owners will revert firefox.spec to not subpackage langpacks
Contingency deadline: before final freeze
Blocks release? No

Documentation