4 ms·

What was unclear in the previous model? Sounds like there is less granularity now on testing the different branches. This could have he effect of bugs being cau

What was unclear in the previous model? Sounds like there is less granularity now on testing the different branches. This could have he effect of bugs being caught later in the development cycle.

lizzard 10y ago
Granularity is pretty good for the Nightly builds, since a new update is normally built and pushed out at least once a day. The mozregression tool is useful for narrowing down when a bug first appeared: http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/
cpeterso 10y ago
The Aurora channel never got as much traction as Mozilla anticipated. The original plan was for Beta to have 10x the number of users as Aurora and Aurora to have 10x the number of users as Nightly. Today, Aurora has only about 2x the number of users as Nightly and there isn't much difference between the types of user hardware or bugs found in Aurora compared to Nightly. Thus, there isn't much additional QA benefit when a Firefox release moves from the Nightly to Aurora channel. Most of the serious regressions are found in Nightly so Aurora is just six weeks of additional latency before new features and bug fixes reach the Release channel users. The Beta channel is not representative of the Release channel user behavior or hardware either. About 60% of the Beta channel users are in India and Indonesia. The story I heard was that, years ago, someone distributed a CD with a Firefox 4 Beta among their friends in India. It went viral and those people have, unknowingly, been on the Beta channel since then.
- LeoNatan25 10y ago
  Nightly is too unstable and beta is too late. Aurora was a more nuanced release, where it had some stability, while still had features that were long before beta appearance.
  - nnethercote 10y ago
    I run Nightly on all my machines, and in my experience its stability is good. YMMV, of course.
    - abrowne 10y ago
      I had used Beta for years, mostly on Mac, but recently I switched full-time to Ubuntu. I wanted some Gtk+3 updates that were only in Nightly, and now I've been using it for several months with a couple of crashes I can remember.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    Mozilla has some projects in place to try to improve Nightly stability and catch regressions sooner. Chrome's Dev channel is a nice middle ground: Dev is just a ~weekly known-good snapshot of the Canary (Nightly) channel that has received some QA. Chrome Dev and Canary have the same major version number.
  - dralley 10y ago
    I'm not sure what "beta is too late" even means, considering that it now occupies the exact position that Aurora did, that you claim is a sweet spot.

What was unclear in the previous model? Sounds like there is less granularity now on testing the different branches. This could have he effect of bugs being caught later in the development cycle.

lizzard 10y ago

Granularity is pretty good for the Nightly builds, since a new update is normally built and pushed out at least once a day. The mozregression tool is useful for narrowing down when a bug first appeared: http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

cpeterso 10y ago

The Aurora channel never got as much traction as Mozilla anticipated. The original plan was for Beta to have 10x the number of users as Aurora and Aurora to have 10x the number of users as Nightly. Today, Aurora has only about 2x the number of users as Nightly and there isn't much difference between the types of user hardware or bugs found in Aurora compared to Nightly. Thus, there isn't much additional QA benefit when a Firefox release moves from the Nightly to Aurora channel. Most of the serious regressions are found in Nightly so Aurora is just six weeks of additional latency before new features and bug fixes reach the Release channel users. The Beta channel is not representative of the Release channel user behavior or hardware either. About 60% of the Beta channel users are in India and Indonesia. The story I heard was that, years ago, someone distributed a CD with a Firefox 4 Beta among their friends in India. It went viral and those people have, unknowingly, been on the Beta channel since then.

LeoNatan25 10y ago
Nightly is too unstable and beta is too late. Aurora was a more nuanced release, where it had some stability, while still had features that were long before beta appearance.
- nnethercote 10y ago
  I run Nightly on all my machines, and in my experience its stability is good. YMMV, of course.
  - abrowne 10y ago
    I had used Beta for years, mostly on Mac, but recently I switched full-time to Ubuntu. I wanted some Gtk+3 updates that were only in Nightly, and now I've been using it for several months with a couple of crashes I can remember.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Mozilla has some projects in place to try to improve Nightly stability and catch regressions sooner. Chrome's Dev channel is a nice middle ground: Dev is just a ~weekly known-good snapshot of the Canary (Nightly) channel that has received some QA. Chrome Dev and Canary have the same major version number.
- dralley 10y ago
  I'm not sure what "beta is too late" even means, considering that it now occupies the exact position that Aurora did, that you claim is a sweet spot.