Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox moving to 4 week releases

hacks.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 195 posts

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#61

Post by lizzard »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #54

I don’t really like these quick release cycles. When things get released every year or half year I have the time to read about the changes but if I work with several packages that release all the time I don’t even have the time to read about the changes. I also think that quality tends to suffer. Over the last two years windows 10 has released several buggy updates that caused our in house apps to stop working.

Firefox ESR exists for exactly this reason. It gets periodic security fixes but not much else and you can stay on the same major version for a year or so. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/enterprise/

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#62

Post by aquabeagle »

fluffything wrote: post #57
lucb1e wrote: post #46

I've always wondered this: why release on a schedule at all? If people demand a certain new feature ("[this will] bring you new features more quickly"), it can just be brought out as it's ready, instead of having to wait an average of 3 (now 2) weeks before it can be released? And why does this have to increment the major version, since when is every single update backwards incompatible?

Firefox ships ~100 binaries for 100 different targets, from mobile phones, to desktops, tablets, ... x86, arm, sparc, ppc, riscv, ... X linux, windows, macos, freebds, openbsd, netbsd, .... X arch linux, debian, ubuntu .. At some point you need to say this is what we want to ship, and branch, and make sure that not only all tests pass, but that the installers work, run the benchmark suite that might not be run on eve…

Mozilla only provides binaries for Linux 32-bit, Linux 64-bit, macOS, win32, and win64:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/69.0/

All of the various Linux distributions just repackage those binaries. iOS and Android are distributed only through the App Store and Google Play.

The BSDs and other ("tier 3") platforms have to compile from source and distribute their own packages:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Supported_b...

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#63

Post by lizzard »

bri3d wrote: post #37
acqq wrote: post #7

> In recent quarters, we’ve had many requests to take features to market sooner. Surely not from the users. > Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Poor guys. At least the process “guarantees” long term quality as the result. > Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market require…

> Surely not from the users. I'd love for the recent changes to rendering which fix long standing performance issues on OSX to hit release as soon as possible. https://twitter.com/whimboo/status/1168437524357898240 . Many users are running nightly right now to take up these changes because they are so valuable. As a user, I'm requesting Firefox take features to market sooner :) > Poor guys. At least the process “guar…

I actually took those changes in 70, so they should make it to the release version at the end of October. If you can, please try using 70 Beta and see how the power use improves!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#64

Post by acqq »

aquabeagle wrote: post #62
fluffything wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox ships ~100 binaries for 100 different targets, from mobile phones, to desktops, tablets, ... x86, arm, sparc, ppc, riscv, ... X linux, windows, macos, freebds, openbsd, netbsd, .... X arch linux, debian, ubuntu .. At some point you need to say this is what we want to ship, and branch, and make sure that not only all tests pass, but that the installers work, run the benchmark suite that might not be run on eve…

Mozilla only provides binaries for Linux 32-bit, Linux 64-bit, macOS, win32, and win64: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/69.0/ All of the various Linux distributions just repackage those binaries. iOS and Android are distributed only through the App Store and Google Play. The BSDs and other ("tier 3") platforms have to compile from source and distribute their own packages: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-…

> All of the various Linux distributions just repackage those binaries

Debian and Ubuntu don’t build from sources?

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#65

Post by earenndil »

aquabeagle wrote: post #62
fluffything wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox ships ~100 binaries for 100 different targets, from mobile phones, to desktops, tablets, ... x86, arm, sparc, ppc, riscv, ... X linux, windows, macos, freebds, openbsd, netbsd, .... X arch linux, debian, ubuntu .. At some point you need to say this is what we want to ship, and branch, and make sure that not only all tests pass, but that the installers work, run the benchmark suite that might not be run on eve…

Mozilla only provides binaries for Linux 32-bit, Linux 64-bit, macOS, win32, and win64: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/69.0/ All of the various Linux distributions just repackage those binaries. iOS and Android are distributed only through the App Store and Google Play. The BSDs and other ("tier 3") platforms have to compile from source and distribute their own packages: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-…

Most linuces build their own firefoxes from source, same as the BSDs.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#66

Post by bengoodger »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #54

I don’t really like these quick release cycles. When things get released every year or half year I have the time to read about the changes but if I work with several packages that release all the time I don’t even have the time to read about the changes. I also think that quality tends to suffer. Over the last two years windows 10 has released several buggy updates that caused our in house apps to stop working.

Quality can be worse in a long-time cycle project: - Engineers are motivated to slam their feature in, because if they miss the train the next one's not for 12 months. - You get one moment per year to connect with your customers & understand how well/not well your changes worked. This means either riskier things happen or that innovation slows to a crawl.

My 2 cents, speaking from some experience working on long time cycle projects and shorter cycle projects.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#67

Post by acqq »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #45
boring_twenties wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is already addressed in the parent comment, "deal with a more frequent risk of getting an update I don't like"

This isn't going to significantly increase the speed at which new features are developed, just the speed at which they're released. The overall risk of you encountering a new feature you don't like won't be higher.

Whoever spends some fixed amount of time evaluating the release will now spend more than 50% time than before.

I’m one of those. If I’m only one of 200 (as in, 199 don't care) and if Firefox has 200 million users, Firefox will waste millions of hours of user’s time per each additional release.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#68

Post by bytematic »

lucb1e wrote: post #46

I've always wondered this: why release on a schedule at all? If people demand a certain new feature ("[this will] bring you new features more quickly"), it can just be brought out as it's ready, instead of having to wait an average of 3 (now 2) weeks before it can be released? And why does this have to increment the major version, since when is every single update backwards incompatible?

At my work the culture is just to ship changes as soon as they improve the product/codebase

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#69

Post by acqq »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #9
acqq wrote: post #7

> In recent quarters, we’ve had many requests to take features to market sooner. Surely not from the users. > Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Poor guys. At least the process “guarantees” long term quality as the result. > Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market require…

Your first comment implies you speak for all users; certainly you don't. Your second comment is antagonistically sarcastic. Your third comment is easy cynicism. As a counterpoint, Firefox does put a lot of effort into stability, reducing CPU power (read the recent change on OSX in that regard). You seem to be suggesting a shorter release cycle will prevent them from continuing that work.

> Your first comment implies

It doesn't.

> certainly you don't.

I don't. I speak just for all the users that don't benefit from the more frequent release cycle.

Note that the more frequent release cycle doesn't mean that any development will take less (especially absolute) time. It can even take more, as more frequent release cycles mean that administrative work related to every release increases.

> You seem to be suggesting a shorter release cycle will prevent them from continuing that work.

No. Again you construct what I haven't said, because you don't have valid arguments against what I've actually said.

I'm claiming that the total work by both the developers inside of Mozilla and by all the users who have to respond to the event of the new release increases with this management decision. And I quote the argument of the management, written in the release, which I consider to be weak compared to the said costs:

"Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market requirements"

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#70

Post by ksec »

Please Correct me if I am wrong.

"We’re adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly. "

Does having faster release cycle really means having new features more quickly? The original 6-8 Weeks are already pretty damn fast. So I this pcs as marketing to general new site rather than technical.

Firefox, ( And Google Chrome ) already has Alpha and Beta Channels with fairly large number of audience testing it in real world. And features requires time to think, design, bake, tested in real world and refine, having a few more releases in between those process doesn't make the features come out any quicker.

Post reply on HN