Hi Michael,
Am Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 12:21:09AM +0000 schrieb Michael Gilbert:
> control: severity -1 important
>
> Even though chrome now discourages older plugins, they can be manually
> enabled:
> https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/2664769?visit_id=638851973258110667-2097406925&p=unsupported_extensions&rd=1#unsupported_extensions
Thanks for pointing this out. That workaround may indeed still exist.
However, I am not convinced that this alone justifies keeping lwn4chrome
in Debian going forward (cc: Andrew Pollock as upstream).
>From my point of view, there are several concerns:
0. If manual re-enabling is required, this should at least be
documented clearly in README.Debian. Without that, users will
reasonably conclude that the package is simply broken on
current Chromium versions.
2. The upstream situation is problematic. The original source no
longer appears to be available online (including Andrew's other
sites, such as his blog). This is also mentioned in bug #1126052.
In practice, this means Debian has become the de-facto upstream,
with no realistic path for upstream maintenance or revival.
3. Chromium has explicitly moved to disabling older extension formats,
and this trend is very unlikely to reverse. Keeping a package that
depends on users bypassing upstream browser safety mechanisms feels
brittle and increasingly out of step with how Chromium is intended
to be used.
4. The functionality itself is modest. Even the description only
promises to make LWN "slightly easier to read". Given the
maintenance cost, the ongoing compatibility issues, and the need
for manual user intervention, I am not sure the benefit-to-effort
ratio is still reasonable.
5. From a user perspective, I suspect very few Debian users would
notice or be negatively impacted if this package were removed. On
current stable and testing releases, it no longer works out of the
box, and requiring users to override Chromium's extension policy is
a significant hurdle.
Taken together, this makes me question whether lwn4chrome still meets
Debian's usual standards for usability and maintainability. While I
appreciate the historical usefulness of the package, removal may now be
the least surprising and most honest option for users.
I'm happy to hear other views, but this is why I currently lean towards
dropping it from the archive.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
https://fam-tille.de
