I've just made the overdue updates to the Mozilla release schedule over at Brendan's Roadmap document.
Drivers have been working on some changes to the release schedule to try to avoid 1.8 colliding with the aviary 1.0 releases. With the recent 1.8 alpha releases, 1.7 Seamonkey branch releases, and the Firefox and Thunderbird releases all happening around the same time, we were stretched too thin and this schedule adjustment should help us avoid that next time around.
The change is fairly simple. We're slotting in a third 1.8 alpha release and so pushing out the beta release and the creation of the 1.8 branch by 6 weeks.
Posted by asa at July 31, 2004 07:27 PMThis is good, I suppose. A longer Alpha development period is a very, very good thing.
I feel that while Mozilla's previous 3-month development cycle was good for getting out very good, stable, and fast milestones, the problem was that they came out so fast that there wasn't enough time to really develop and re-architect stuff - i.e. they really were incremental cycles, with no time to really build something new and cool that takes a lot of time.
With a longer development cycle, I hope that perhaps you guys will be able to use the longer time period to develop some really cool stuff that require a lot of changes - something that was harder with a faster development cycle.
Posted by: Jason Lustig on July 31, 2004 09:19 PMWhat happens after firefox 1.0 / mozilla 1.8 ?
Is there a plan to merge the two?
Maybe it would be a good thing to start indicating in the image the date it was last modified on? Just so that we can know how up-to-date in terms of current thinking it is...
Posted by: Mook on August 1, 2004 01:46 AMBetter identification of things would be most welcome. It is quite simply not possible to identify most, if not all, of the images without launching them. (Yes, I know that the link to them is typically labeled in some manner, but it should still be possible to name the gz image or dmg image itself in some identifiable manner.) Some, specifically Firefox, have to actually be installed before being able to identify which build branch is involved.
Also there continues to be a confusing trend in numbering branches which end and then mysteriously reappear without explanation.
There is also the current matter of Moz 1.7 (for OS X) which actually is 1.7.2 and 1.7.2 (for OS X) which is actually 1.7. Both have simultaneous release dates. What's the story.
Although the FF Trunk Nightly builds are quite stable for the most part (and I use them in preference to the Branch builds) virtually all extensions are either broken or simply will not install with 0.9.1+ builds. Some will install with 0.9.0 builds and can then be run on 0.9.1+, but that can create problems of its own as the apostrophe corruption does not appear to have been resolved in the Branch builds as yet and the changes in the files in the profile between builds can cause difficulties (when run on the same profile, although not at the same time).
Not being in a "rush" is good. I think the quality of the builds has improved.
Thanks!
Posted by: Richard on August 1, 2004 05:06 AM