Comment 0 for bug 561510

Binary package hint: chromium-browser

As previously mentioned, Chromium in Ubuntu is currently following the upstream
Beta Channel. As a reminder, upstream maintains 3 channels: Dev, Beta and Stable
(each being more stable than the previous one, with less frequent updates).
I plan on jumping on the Stable channel once upstream starts doing it for Linux
(linux only has dev and beta as of now).

"Channel" means it's populated by continuous upgrades. Chromium is not driven
by a "dot" release roadmap like most other projects are.
It means any time a hot fix is available, an upgrade could be sent to the
channel. Hot fixes could be security fixes, regressions fixes, or even hot
features to unbreak a web service. Channels eventually jump higher in the tree
to catch up on features.
Upstream (Google) is providing a decent QA for those channels with Chrome. In
Ubuntu, we have clones for each channel (PPAs) with Chromium. Those PPAs are
automatically populated, and the beta PPA serves as a staging platform before I
upload to universe.

Upstream documents its channels there: http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/

Backporting those hot fixes is unrealistic without a dedicated team due to the
nature of the code. It's far too big and moving very fast. My preference would
be to do what has already been discussed (and agreed upon) for Firefox, i.e.
stop fighting with backports and simply send the full package from upstream
after some period of staging (a week top).

Here is an example of the life of the beta channel for linux over the
last 2 months:

2010-04-07 linux/beta (5.0.342.7 -> 5.0.342.9)
2010-03-25 linux/beta (5.0.307.11 -> 5.0.342.7)
2010-02-27 linux/beta (5.0.307.9 -> 5.0.307.11)
2010-02-18 linux/beta (5.0.307.7 -> 5.0.307.9)

and the window stable:
2010-03-31 win/stable (4.1.249.1042 -> 4.1.249.1045)
2010-03-24 win/stable (4.1.249.1036 -> 4.1.249.1042)
2010-03-18 win/stable (4.0.249.89 -> 4.1.249.1036)

this seems acceptable in term of number of updates.

I therefor request a permanent FFe to be able to upload in sync with upstream
(delta the staging period).

This should cover the following 3 source packages: chromium-browser,
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg and gyp (all 3 are part of chromium with tight
dependencies).