Starting in Maverick, we now send Firefox crash reports directly to Mozilla, using the google-breakpad integration shipped with Firefox. I'd like to switch this on in Lucid for the next point release (scheduled for September 7th).
Unlike other packages in the archive where we aren't particularly interested in crash reports in the stable release (so we disable Apport), Mozilla rely on crash reporting as part of the feedback from testers of their point releases (which we ship). Enabling the crash reporter will hopefully help Mozilla catch regressions earlier, and avoid fire-drill releases like 3.6.8 which are a pain for us.
The change will go in to the staging PPA - ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa (today hopefully, as we already have the first spin of 3.6.9). It will sit there for testing until the official release, as with all the other point releases.
The change is pretty low risk (building breakpad, turning on the signal handler in Firefox and shipping the crashreporter binary in the Firefox package).
The crash reporter can be tested with this extension: http://code.google.com/p/crashme/
Does that affect any build/compile options as well (like optimization, debug symbols, etc.), or is it merely building and shipping some additional code? Does it have a considerable impact on the package size?
If upstream actually wants us to enable this, then I see no reason to decline that, as long as it doesn't potentially cause regressions.