[SRU] Upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04 will keep the 18.04 chromium-browser due to a higher version than the transitional deb in 20.04

[Olivier Tilloy]

This bug is another manifestation of bug #1858500, but with a different upgrade path.
bionic-{security,updates} will soon have chromium-browser 84.0.4147.89-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 (pending sponsoring by the security team), and when that happens the version number in focal will be lower, meaning that chromium-browser won't be updated to the new package that installs the snap for a user upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04.

Since chromium-browser in 20.04 is a mostly empty transitional package that installs the chromium snap, all that's needed to fix this is to bump its version number.

[Impact]

Users upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04 will not get the latest chromium snap replacing the chromium-browser deb package as intended.
This is because the version number in 18.04 is (will soon be) greater than the version in 20.04. Bumping the version number in 20.04 is enough to fix this.

[Test Case]

 * Ensure that chromium-browser 84.0.4147.89-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 is available in bionic-{security,updates}
 * 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.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package chromium-browser - 84.0.4147.89-0ubuntu1

---------------
chromium-browser (84.0.4147.89-0ubuntu1) groovy; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release: 84.0.4147.89 (LP: #1889106)

 -- Olivier Tilloy <email address hidden> Mon, 27 Jul 2020 18:39:43 +0200

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

Hello Olivier, or anyone else affected,

Accepted chromium-browser into focal-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/84.0.4147.89-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-focal to verification-done-focal. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-focal. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Thanks Łukasz.

In the meantime the 84.0.4147.105 update was published to {xenial,bionic}-{security,updates}, so the version number needs bumping again, for the upgrade path to really work.

I have uploaded 84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu1 to groovy-proposed, and 84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 is now in the focal unapproved queue, could you please accept it, to supersede 84.0.4147.89-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 ?

[Robie Basak (racb)]

I asked about this on ubuntu-devel@. It'd be nice to have a solution where we don't have to keep doing this.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

It seems that ubuntu-devel@ is generally in favour about an epoch bump.

Unless there are objections in the next few days, please could you arrange this, Olivier? I assume this is necessary in Groovy first, and then in Focal.

I hope this is useful to you as well - then you won't have to do these bumps again.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Hello Olivier, or anyone else affected,

Accepted chromium-browser into focal-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-focal to verification-done-focal. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-focal. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

seb128 suggested in #ubuntu-devel that it's appropriate to accept this one and then sort the epoch bump out later. So I did that.

Let's discuss the details when you're back, Olivier, to avoid round-tripping through the queue.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Thanks Robie for the suggestion. I hadn't thought of an epoch bump, but it sounds like a good solution to the recurring problem at hand.

This is the ubuntu-devel@ discussion for reference: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2020-August/041127.html.

I am going to test the package in focal-proposed and validate this SRU, and I will then add the epoch in groovy and SRU it to focal.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Verified working.
For convenience I used a slightly different testing method than the test case in the bug description: I downloaded and installed (with `dpkg -i`) the chromium-browser, chromium-browser-l10n and chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra debs from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 in a fully up-to-date focal VM. I then ran `sudo apt update` to verify that no update was available for chromium-browser. I then enabled focal-proposed for universe and verified that the update to chromium-browser 84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 was available, installed it with `sudo apt install chromium-browser`, and checked that this installed the chromium snap as expected. I then verified that chromium-browser launches and works as expected.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package chromium-browser - 84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.20.04.1

---------------
chromium-browser (84.0.4147.105-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) focal; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release: 84.0.4147.105 (LP: #1889106)

 -- Olivier Tilloy <email address hidden> Fri, 07 Aug 2020 15:49:00 +0200

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The verification of the Stable Release Update for chromium-browser has completed successfully and the package is now being released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.