Reminder: Firefox 3.6.6 and 3.5.11 code freeze is TONIGHT @ 11:59 pm Pacific
Just a reminder that code freeze for Firefox 3.6.6 and 3.5.11 is TONIGHT @ 11:59 pm Pacific time.
If you have any bugs in these queries, we need your attention on them ASAP (if you aren't in the critical path for Firefox 4 beta of course):
- Firefox 3.6.6 blocking bugs that do not have an approved patch
- Firefox 3.5.11 blocking bugs that do not have an approved patch
If you don't think one of your bugs should be blocking, please say so in the bug or email me directly.
If you have any bugs in these queries, your patch needs to be landed:
These bugs have the checkin-needed keyword and it would be great for other people to land them:
Ehsan and Reed may beat you to those checkin-needed bugs though!
Firefox 3.6.4 is available, now with less plugin crashes!
Firefox 3.6.4 was released today! This version of Firefox has out-of-process-plugins (OOPP) for Linux and Windows users. Check out the announcement for more info.
Thank you to everyone that worked so hard over the last couple of months to make this release happen. I know OOPP will be a huge win for Firefox users and will make browsing better all around.
Community testers, release engineering, QA, Firefox and platform engineering, and others did amazing work to make this release solid and release it into the hands of our users.
There were a lot of "firsts" for this release and I believe we learned a lot. I'll be giving a talk at the Mozilla Summit summarizing what we learned and how we can apply it to future releases, so if you are interested in the nitty-gritty check it out!
Thanks again to everyone for their hard work!
Heads up, the next Firefox platform version is 1.9.2.6 instead of 1.9.2.5
I just wanted to post a quick note about this to a wider audience as I have been talking about it in Mozilla meetings...
Firefox 3.6.4 (get the release candidate!) has a platform version of 1.9.2.4. The version number 1.9.2.5 is currently being used by Fennec. We'll be taking fixes above and beyond that version, so the next platform version Firefox will use will be named 1.9.2.6. We will keep the version numbers coherent by naming it Firefox 3.6.6 (essentially skipping over 3.6.5).
I will be moving the blocking flags and status flags as appropriate, so if you see activity in bugs don't worry. Also, If you have approvals for 1.9.2.5 they are now for 1.9.2.6 (and should still be landed on mozilla-1.9.2 default).
This is nothing more than a name change, everything still refers to the same Firefox release.
Firefox 3.6.4 is still chugging along
If you haven't called into Mozilla's platform or release meetings you may be wondering what the heck is going on with Firefox 3.6.4.
We originally announced a beta of Firefox 3.6.4 on April 20th, 2010. We then let everyone know there was an updated beta on May 4th, 2010. Today is May 27th. What's been happening since the 4th? Lots!
- In total we built (and mostly released) five builds of Firefox 3.6.4 for our beta users
- We have been analyzing crash reports, making sure there are no new issues and quantifying the benefits of out-of-process-plugins. Out-of-process-plugin hangs / crashes (or OOPsies) are now easier to see thanks to a new version of Socorro that rolled out a couple weeks ago. You can see an example by looking at this report. The "hang |" signatures are reports that are sent when a plugin misbehaves. Note that there is still more work to do to filter out OOPsies in aggregate graphs and counts
- We have been working with antivirus and firewall vendors to make sure the new "plugin-container.exe" process used by OOPP isn't flagged as malware. If you work for such a vendor and have not heard from us please get in touch
- We have started creating the sixth build with a fix to the only known blocker. Hopefully build number six will meet our high quality standards and become Firefox 3.6.4 final (after a beta period of course). I'll do another blog post letting everyone know when the release candidate build is out. In the meantime, you can help out by installing and testing the latest beta from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-beta.html
As always, the most up-to-date release plan can be found on the wiki.
We know out-of-process-plugins will make a huge difference for our user base and we are trying to get Firefox 3.6.4 released as soon as possible. Hang tight and help us test!
Thanks to those who worked on Firefox 3.6.3
I just wanted to give a quick thank you to those who helped get Firefox 3.6.3 out the door. This was the first release I was driving and everyone at Mozilla was super helpful and patient with my questions.
Though a rapid security update would normally be viewed as entirely negative, 3.6.3 had a couple of positive points for me:
- It was my first release, which made me more aware of what was going on. The experience should help releases going forward.
- The release fixed a public security issue without regressions. It made Firefox users safer without compromising stability. The no regressions bit is very important, as we want users to trust updates enough to apply them quickly. If you see a regression please let us know.
- We beat our Pwn2Own response time from last year. Last year it was 10 days (which is great), this year it was 8 days (which is amazing).
- We beat other companies to a fix and received recognition from the press for it. Though security is not a race, it's nice to be first (without sacrificing stability of course).
- Beating Apple to a publicly released fix gives me the opportunity to gloat to my old team. I enjoy gloating immensely.
Thanks everyone!
Hello planet!
This is me
My name's Christian Legnitto (LegNeato on IRC/Twitter) and I started working at Mozilla last week. I love it so far! I joined Mozilla as the new release driver for Firefox security and stability releases, so you'll be hearing a lot about updates from me.
Before Mozilla I worked at Apple doing (surprise) security and stability releases for Mac OS X. If you use Mac OS X and have installed any security update or point release since 10.4.6, you've seen my handiwork.
So what does a release driver do? A lot! First and foremost, I define the scope and schedule for the deliverable/update. Once defined, I then drive the project forward. This usually involves a lot of status checking and bugging people for fixes and/or testing. At the end of it all I'm the person that decides to push the big red button and send an update out to millions of users. And if anything breaks because of the update? It's my job to take responsibility, figure out why it happened, and make sure it doesn't happen again.
I'll also be using my past release experience to suggest process and tool improvements at Mozilla. And because I am a programmer at heart, I will likely write a bunch of tools myself when I have downtime.
My Mozilla-related posts should show up on planet.mozilla.org and planet.firefox.com, but I'll be talking about other stuff as well, so feel free to check out http://christian.legnitto.com/blog or follow me on twitter (@LegNeato). Also, all this tweeting and blog posting is fairly new to me...so feel free to give me some pointers!