[Pkg-mozext-maintainers] Bug#976697: webext-umatrix: no longer developed upstream, remove or switch to LibreMatrix or?

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Paul Wise wrote:
> uMatrix is no longer developed upstream:
> 
>    https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix
>    
>    This repository has been archived by the owner. It is now read-only.
[…]
> The upstream author has stated they no longer have time for it:
> 
>    https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uMatrix-issues/issues/291#issuecomment-694988696
>    
>    I've archived uMatrix's repo, I can't and won't be spending any more
>    time on this project, and neither on all such issues.

Despite this he did two stable release (1.4.2 and 1.4.4) in July 2021
a bunch of beta releases in 2020, February and July 2021:

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/releases
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-title/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf?ucbcb=1
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/umatrix/

(And then archived the Github repo again as it seems. *sigh*)

So for me it looks like the author still cares about security issues,
but has no time for other support. Which IMHO would be OK for a Debian
Stable release.

> These are the options for solving this issue:
> 
> uMatrix could be removed in favour of uBlock Origin's advanced mode.

IMHO this is no real solution. It works completely different and is at
least (from an UI/UX aspect) unusable for me. IMHO no alternative.

> uMatrix could be removed and LibreMatrix packaged, I think this is a
> community fork so it should be a drop-in replacement.
> 
>    https://www.librematrix.com/

Seems to have been rather short-lived and is dead and removed already:

  This site can’t be reached
  www.librematrix.com’s server IP address could not be found.

  […]

  ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

>    https://github.com/LibreMatrix/LibreMatrix

This as well:

  404 This is not the web page you are looking for.

The same counts for the according account:
https://github.com/LibreMatrix

So IMHO continuing with the original source seems (again) the best
solution to me.

I'd also help packaging 1.4.4 (at least), but the packaging is quite
non-standard while no debian/README.source is present. And
amo-changelog throws Python errors, probably needs an update wrt.
python3-urllib:

~/uMatrix/umatrix → make -f debian/rules get-orig-changelog
amo-changelog -p rst umatrix
failed to write debian/upstream/changelog.html: module 'urllib' has no attribute 'error'
make: *** [debian/rules:11: get-orig-changelog] Error 1

Also it is unclear to me why the source is the Mozilla XPI while the
package works with both and upstream offers different download files
for Firefox and for Chromium/Chrome. (Then again, I haven't worked on
browser extensions since Mozilla ditched XUL…)

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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