Install Python 3.11 to /opt/python3.11 for Mozilla and/or QtWebEngine

[Bruce Dubbs]

Mozilla is just too slow to adapt for any breaking changes in dependencies. And QtWebEngine 5 is not maintained. We are working around the issue with patches or seds but doing so is nasty for users.

A SBU for Python 3.11 is about 40 seconds at -j8 with:

./configure --prefix=/opt/python3.11 --with-system-expat --disable-shared --without-ensurepip

I used Python 3.11.0 and it works for Firefox. But we'd better use 3.11.1 or above because 3.11.0 will fail to build once we update to GCC 14 (per Fedora developers).

We'll not add Python 3.11 into currency, nor update it even if a security issue is reported because the Python 3.11 build will be only intended for building Mozilla and/or QtWebEngine, and we consider the Mozilla & QtWebEngine tarballs "trusted". We should make our intention clearly in the upcoming Python 3.11 page.

Checklist

• QtWebEngine:
• Firefox:
• SpiderMonkey: I tend to keep the current work around for SpiderMonkey because it's simple.
• Thunderbird:
• Seamonkey:

[Douglas R. Reno]

I'm already going to be doing something similar for Thunderbird and Seamonkey, both of which have large amounts of seds that make them very difficult to follow and read. We should do the same to Firefox as well

[ken@…]

Sounds as if this will cause problems for anybody updating old systems (e.g. those with python-3.11 in particular).

The current large number of fixes show how much is broken nowadays with what are supposed to be stable releases.

[Douglas R. Reno]

Replying to ken@…:

Sounds as if this will cause problems for anybody updating old systems (e.g. those with python-3.11 in particular).

The current large number of fixes show how much is broken nowadays with what are supposed to be stable releases.

I'll be adding some text to state that you should not apply the patch if you aren't on Python 3.12/ICU 74 so that we can maintain information for security advisories (and testing against Python 3.11 and 3.12)

I'm still of the opinion that Python's minor releases are really Major ones with plenty of compatibility changes. Since Python 3.10 I've felt that 3.11 should've been 4, and now 12 should have been 4. This cycle has been particularly nasty with libxml2, python 3.12, ICU 74, etc. and the amount of fixes required has been hectic (we're almost at 1,000 commits since 12.0!)

[Douglas R. Reno]

Added a checklist to the description of the ticket.

[Douglas R. Reno]

Seamonkey done at 4b3d2071e1a3ae32431948861c8c719cfd61f552

[Xi Ruoyao]

Frankly I don't see an advantage of patch instead of sed.

[Xi Ruoyao]

Currently bdubbs and I think installing Python 3.11 into /opt/python3.11 would be easier.