NPAPI is old, obsolete and for now almost completely removed protocol. AFAIR last browser, supporting it, is currently hardmasked =www-client/firefox-52.9.0. But for now at least =dev-java/icedtea-bin-3.9.0-r1 provides a nsplugin USE to build and unstall the plugin, unsupported for normal user. I think, to not cunfuse users we need also to mask nsplugin USE flag in stable packages and remove it in future.
Remove started three years ago, in 2015. See https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/
I am on the fence on this. It is true that all mainline browsers no longer support NPAPI (or only support it for adobe-flash). However, there are still cases where people need to use these plugins for special projects -- especially java -- which is one of the key reasons why firefox-52.9 is going to remain (p.masked) in the gentoo repo for the forseeable future. I think that I would prefer packages to phase out the nsplugin on their own, as their codebases are updated and no longer bother to provide one themselves (which is going to happen organically, because, well, no mainline browsers support NPAPI anymore:) Especially since I think use.mask'ing the flag is too impactful to legacy end-user configurations. As to educating end-users on the issue, I could do an enews item I suppose..?
Yes. It is my case. I also normally need a java plugin. But hardware vendors followed mainstream browsers upstream. For my case nsplugin was insufficient, application worked only with obsolete, vulnerable and dropped version of jdk. News item with list of applications to use with nsplugins looks very useful.
(In reply to Ian Stakenvicius from comment #2) > It is true that all mainline browsers no longer support NPAPI (or only > support it for adobe-flash). However, there are still cases where people > need to use these plugins for special projects -- especially java -- which > is one of the key reasons why firefox-52.9 is going to remain (p.masked) in > the gentoo repo for the forseeable future. Just today I've find operable «Java Web Start» feature in almost up to date FireFox (www-client/firefox-60.6.1). So, at least in my case, nsplugin for java became obsolete.
The bug has been referenced in the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=b7f17a8ad77989f8c3456ab2521e0f3d72ab6409 commit b7f17a8ad77989f8c3456ab2521e0f3d72ab6409 Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> AuthorDate: 2021-05-01 18:30:15 +0000 Commit: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2021-05-01 21:21:53 +0000 nsplugins.eclass: Mark @DEAD Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/671680 Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/719332 Signed-off-by: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> eclass/nsplugins.eclass | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
The bug has been closed via the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=96ba036a7a84d7418b2db8cca51acef2010da3ff commit 96ba036a7a84d7418b2db8cca51acef2010da3ff Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> AuthorDate: 2021-05-30 22:02:42 +0000 Commit: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2021-05-30 22:03:32 +0000 nsplugins.eclass: Remove last-rited eclass Closes: https://bugs.gentoo.org/671680 Signed-off-by: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> eclass/nsplugins.eclass | 80 ------------------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 80 deletions(-)
