Hi, On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 at 17:49, Andreas Tille <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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). > > Thanks for looping me in. > 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. > > My website infrastructure is a bit of a mess at the moment and I haven't been able to prioritise working on fixing that. I could relocate the upstream for this extension to GitHub though, and while I'm at it resolve any outstanding issues with the extension functioning desirably. I hadn't realised it had been packaged for Debian... > Kind regards > Andreas. > > -- > https://fam-tille.de >
