chase's blog

Earlier this evening I landed the patches in bug 302721. This work is the result of much effort by the software update team -- Darin Fisher, Ben Goodger, Mike Morgan, and myself with reviews and additional patches by Scott MacGregor, Brian Ryner, and Benjamin Smedberg. It adds the capability for Firefox and Thunderbird to send channel data along with the rest of the app's information to AUS, the Application Update Server.

What channels will we eventually have? Time will tell. For now, AUS recognizes two channels: default and nightly. When a build is created and --enable-update-channel isn't set in mozconfig the 'default' channel is selected. The trunk and Mozilla 1.8 release build systems all embed the 'nightly' channel. The default channel gets no updates from AUS while the nightly channel gets the latest nightly build. Firefox 1.5 beta will be released with a channel that will let AUS limit the updates downloaders of those builds get to beta quality or better through the 1.5 cycle.

In case you want to disable software update for a nightly build that you've downloaded, follow these steps:

1. Go to Tools → Options.
2. Click Advanced.
3. Click the Update tab.
4. Under "When updates to Deer Park are found" click "Ask me what I want to do".

However, we encourage nightly users to help us test software update as we drive towards the beta. Feedback is welcome and if you're interested in providing more data or hearing our software update testing plans, please join the software update beta testing mailing list.

Great job!

Could you please show the *percent complete* in the Windows taskbar button? Nobody wants to stare at the "Downloading Update" dialog, and it would be nice to be able to see at a glance how far along the download is. This would be very similar to the Tools / Downloads dialog.

Thanks!

PS. Do the Thunderbird trunk nightlies support this update system yet?

Posted by: Peter Lairo at August 25, 2005 1:43 AM

Chase, what update URL should we all be using now?

I still have that old aus-staging one set.

Posted by: Caleb at August 25, 2005 5:14 AM

Are you planning on hosting AUS channels on a more standard port for those of us running behind strict firewalls (or firewall administrators)??

Posted by: Andrés at August 25, 2005 6:04 AM

Awesome stuff!

Posted by: Chris at August 25, 2005 7:58 AM

Peter Lairo: Thanks for the feedback! Percent complete would be an interesting addition to the UI. You can file an enhancement request in bugzilla or make a suggestion on the forums. As we're late in the cycle for 1.5, maybe it'll be a feature in 2.0! And, yes, the Thunderbird trunk nightlies should support this just as well as Firefox trunk nightlies.

Caleb: Hi there. The old aus-staging URL should still work but no guarantees for how long. Either use that URL to update to a new build and then 'reset' the app.update.url pref, or set your app.update.url pref to use 'aus2.mozilla.org/update/' instead of 'aus-staging.mozilla.org:8711/update2/'.

Andres: Yes, the production service we introduced at its final home with these changes communicates over HTTPS port 443. That should make it through even the stricter firewalls.

Chris: Yes, I think so, too!

Posted by: Chase at August 25, 2005 12:22 PM