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Although I've not looked into exactly why Mozilla have adopted the rapid-release cycle, I'd imagine it may be something to do with the ability to quickly drop b
by skl_ 15y ago
Although I've not looked into exactly why Mozilla have adopted the rapid-release cycle, I'd imagine it may be something to do with the ability to quickly drop backwards-compatibility and support. That way the code base can mature faster and less time is spent on redunant versions.
- DEinspanjer 15y agoThe most important reason for it was to keep new features from being stuck in limbo just because they happened to be part of the same branch as a feature that was taking a long time to be production ready. This is what killed us with 4.0. There were big and nice features in 4 that were actually ready more than 6 months prior to release, but they couldn't go because they were "full release" features and they were waiting for other features that were considered to be "must have" for 4.0. With the rapid release cycle, when features start development, they have the ability to be easily configured out of the release product if they aren't ready for a particular version. We have a reliable release schedule that we expect to hit every 6 weeks. Obviously, we do our best to have as many new features as are ready be part of each release, but we don't leave people wondering when it will finally happen because we keep to the schedule and release the features that are ready. Some of the biggest parts of this release were actually groundwork improvements to make the add-ons ecosphere more comfortable in the context of rapid release.