FS#40676 - [chromium] re-enable NPAPI support
Attached to Project:
Arch Linux
Opened by Balder Lingegård (cellisten) - Wednesday, 04 June 2014, 07:49 GMT
Last edited by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Saturday, 07 June 2014, 16:59 GMT
Opened by Balder Lingegård (cellisten) - Wednesday, 04 June 2014, 07:49 GMT
Last edited by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Saturday, 07 June 2014, 16:59 GMT
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Details
Description: From version 35 Google has dropped NPAPI
support. This causes several plugins, among them pipelight
(used to get silverlight, widevine etc. to work), to stop
working. The NPAPI support is only dropped in linux for now
which makes the linux version feature incomplete. I realize
that pipelight is not part of the package database but NPAPI
support is larger than that.
Additional info: * Present in version 35+ of chromium * NPAPI plugin needs to be used, for example pipelight. Steps to reproduce: * Install pipelight * Enable silverlight (pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight) * Go to http://bubblemark.com/sl3/TestPage.html and test, will not work in 35, will work in 34. Proposed fix: Michael Müller of pipelight has already proposed patches to chromium to re-enable the NPAPI plugins at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1307989. Patches are attached. The fix causes the content to be played in a separate window as embed is not supported. Pipelight version >= 0.2.6 is required to make this work. |
This task depends upon
Closed by Dave Reisner (falconindy)
Saturday, 07 June 2014, 16:59 GMT
Reason for closing: Won't implement
Additional comments about closing: upstream decision, and it's not Arch's place to change it
Saturday, 07 June 2014, 16:59 GMT
Reason for closing: Won't implement
Additional comments about closing: upstream decision, and it's not Arch's place to change it
I don't think this should be added. And besides that, removing NPAPI is an upstream choice. We shouldn't bring back an API that was removed upstream.
I think there is a value in supporting Silverlight, Widevine etc. on Linux and without this patch that will be impossible until the pipelight team find another way. Maybe we could add the patches until a new solution is implemented from the pipelight team? What would your suggested solution be to get for example silverlight support in chromium on Linux? Just not bother?
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-dev/xEbgvWE7wMk
Dropping NPAPI will be worse for Linux than Windows when it comes to these plugins as it's very hard to wrap a wine sandbox in a PPAPI, as discussed in the pipelight bug I linked.
But the simple question I would like an answer to is this:
What do you think is the best way to proceed if you as a user do need to use these plugins. Should that user simply change to Firefox?
I personally don't think it's a very big problem as I've found the root cause. In my case, I can downgrade chromium, use another browser or simply recompile chromium with the patches. For a lot of users, this won't be the case. Maybe an announcement would be in order so users who use these plugins can see that to upgrade will break them? I think it is exactly the type of problem that Arch users expect to be informed about when they follow the guideline in the wiki to know if any user intervention is needed. Wouldn't you agree?