No Firefox?

knightjp · Aug 19, 2022

On a recent new installation of FreeBSD, I tried to "pkg install firefox" and got an error stating that the package does not exist.
Kind of odd considering a month ago, when installing FreeBSD, it was there.
I did a search and saw that the only package available is Firefox-ESR.
I'm not able to find anything else.
What was the reason for it being removed. Is there another good browser that isn't Chrome or Chromium based?

Firefox-ESR is good, but I'm not able to find the extensions that I usually use with the other one.

icodeforyou · Aug 19, 2022

I just updated Firefox to version 104. It is clearly present. I got both Firefox and Firefox-ESR.

Edit: What system version of FreeBSD are you running?

elgrande · Aug 19, 2022

According to freshports the package currently only exists in „latest“.
Maybe you are using quaterly?

SirDice · Aug 19, 2022

It may have disappeared momentarily due to build issues. Latest builds on quarterly were successful though but that may not have been copied to the package repo mirrors yet.

http://beefy14.nyi.freebsd.org/build.html?mastername=130amd64-quarterly&build=b8d64c266200
(you need IPv6 to access those logs)

zirias@ · Aug 19, 2022

I've seen a lot of threads about this very same issue. Isn't there a "sticky" about it yet?

In a nutshell, building package repositories, there's always the possibility that somewhere, a build fails. Now you have a problem, and there are two possible strategies to deal with it.

Just skip whatever fails (and, of course, all its dependencies) when creating the package repository. The drawback: some packages will be missing until the error is fixed.
Keep previously built packages and add them to the new repository. The drawback: you lose direct control over the versions and might run into incompatibilities throughout the dependency tree.

FreeBSD opts for strategy (1). One way to see what packages of a port are currently available is to have a look at freshports.

In any case, build errors are automatically mailed to maintainers and will be fixed ASAP, so all you have to do is (normally) wait a few days until a new version of the package is there.

knightjp · Aug 19, 2022

icodeforyou said:
I just updated Firefox to version 104. It is clearly present. I got both Firefox and Firefox-ESR.

Edit: What system version of FreeBSD are you running?

I'm using FreeBSD 13

mer · Aug 19, 2022

FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE, quarterly, pkg upgrade this morning picked up firefox-104.0_1,2 for me. pkg upgrade yesterday did not show an upgrade for firefox so perhaps you caught build servers or pkg repos in flux (broken build, repos cleaned or in the process of getting repopulated). Maybe just try again now.


Name           : firefox
Version        : 104.0_1,2
Installed on   : Fri Aug 19 05:05:24 2022 EDT
Origin         : www/firefox
Architecture   : FreeBSD:13:amd64

knightjp · Aug 19, 2022

mer said:
FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE, quarterly, pkg upgrade this morning picked up firefox-104.0_1,2 for me. pkg upgrade yesterday did not show an upgrade for firefox so perhaps you caught build servers or pkg repos in flux (broken build, repos cleaned or in the process of getting repopulated). Maybe just try again now.

Name : firefox Version : 104.0_1,2 Installed on : Fri Aug 19 05:05:24 2022 EDT Origin : www/firefox Architecture : FreeBSD:13:amd64

Thanks.. I will check it out.
I came home and just did the normal command again and it was there. I have the latest Firefox.
Not sure why it wasn't there yesterday.

Thanks for the help.

In the interest of conversation, is there anything that can replace Firefox? Are there alternative full featured browsers that aren't Chrome or Chromium based?

No Firefox?

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