As a follow-up to bug #1889106, it was decided that the best solution to handle recurring version bumps for chromium-browser updates in stable series was to bump the package epoch to 1.
See the discussion in https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2020-August/041127.html.
This needs to be done in groovy (done) and SRUed to focal.
[Impact]
Users upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04 will not get the latest chromium snap replacing the chromium-browser deb package as intended as soon as a security update is published to bionic-security (which happens typically every 2-3 weeks).
This is because the version number in 18.04 often ends up being greater than the version in 20.04. Bumping the version number in 20.04 is enough to fix this, and was done a few times already (bug #1858500, bug #1889106), but it is tedious and impractical.
[Test Case]
* Ensure that a version of chromium-browser newer than 84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 is available in bionic-{security,updates} (not currently the case, but will soon happen as version 85.0.4183.83 was just released upstream)
* On a machine running 18.04, ensure that the chromium snap is *not* installed, then install the chromium-browser deb package: sudo apt install chromium-browser
* Upgrade that machine to Ubuntu 20.04
* When upgrading, the chromium-browser package becomes a transitional package that installs the chromium snap
* Verify that the chromium snap is installed
[Regression Potential]
* The chromium snap has some known shortcomings and regressions compared to the deb package, they are being tracked at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bugs?field.tag=snap. Auto-upgrading users from the deb to the snap is the desired behaviour though.
[Original Description]
For a complete rationale, see comments #4, #5, #7 and #8 in bug #1889106, and the discussion in https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2020-August/041127.html.
This needs to be done in groovy and SRUed to focal.
Quoting the ubuntu-devel@ conversation here for easier future reference:
« In doing SRU reviews today, I came across LP: #1889106 which is a
request for a no-change rebuild to bump the version so it beats the
versions presented in previous releases.
The problem is real, but it seems suboptimal to me to keep fixing it
this way. We'll need to keep SRUing chromium-browser to Focal (and later
releases presumably). Every time we do that, all users (who have the
transitional package) get yet another update to download, even if it is
small. And every time it takes both Olivier's and the SRU team's time.
Would an epoch bump be a better option here? Debian doesn't currently
carry a package with that name, so we're already diverged enough that I
don't forsee a problem from there. »
xnox answered:
« lxd used epoch too, to ensure that deb2snap transitional package is
always higher whichever backports are uploaded as debs into previous
series.
https:/
So +1 from me. »
and vorlon answered:
« I agree that an epoch bump on the transitional .deb in focal is a reasonable
solution for this issue. »