Re: Mozilla plans for the squeeze cycle
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 09:41:31PM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 03:39:55PM +0200, Alexander Sack wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 02:41:21PM +0200, Marc Brockschmidt wrote:
> > > Heya,
> > >
> > > As announced on dda [RT1], we want to get an impression when releasing
> > > Squeeze is feasible. We have proposed a (quite ambitious) freeze in December
> > > 2009, and some developers have noted that their planned changes wouldn't be
> > > possible in this time frame. So, to find out when releasing would work for
> > > most people, it would be great if you could answer the following questions:
> > >
> >
> > > * Which major upstream releases of Mozilla/Xulrunner-based software are
> > > expected in the next two years? Which of those are material for Debian
> > > stable, which might be a bit flaky?
> >
> > firefox 3.6 is currently scheduled for december 2009; i think it would
> > be worthwhile to get that in before freeze even if its not yet final
> > at that point; this would help to get a bit longer upstream security
> > support and would make debian more modern. Also it will probably get
> > to final during freeze.
> >
> > Mozilla does not have any 2 years plans that one could rely on. Last I
> > know is the general goal to target a ~9 month cycle, but with usual
> > approach to release when ready (so 3.5 took 12 month).
>
> And security support is dropped 6 months after that for the previous
> release. I.e. Firefox 3.0 security support will be dropped in 4 months.
(leaving the rest of the message for security-team (now CCed)' eyes)
Rough estimates have been published for the next Firefox releases,
namely 3.6, 3.7 and 4.0.
The roadmap is as follows:
3.6 - Q3/Q4 2009
3.7 - Q1/Q2 2010
4.0 - Q3/Q4 2010
What this means is that upstream wants a 6 months release cycle, which
means, with 6 months support for previous releases after a new one, that
a given release (branch) will only be supported one year.
Cheers,
Mike
> Firefox is also not the only mozilla product we have, and only
> considering Firefox may be biaised.
>
> Thunderbird 3.0 might be expected somewhen soonish in the next few
> months, as well as Seamonkey 2.0. They will both be based on Gecko
> 1.9.1, which is the version of Gecko that Firefox 3.5 uses.
>
> Getting all these in sync means we share the same codebase in all
> Mozilla products, which, despite upstream support being dropped earlier
> may substantially help the security team.
>
> Firefox 3.6, on the other hand, relies on Gecko 1.9.2.
>
> I, for one, don't want to maintain 2 gecko codebases in the same
> distribution much longer. But people are free to join the mozilla team
> and help out.
>
> > > * How much time do you usually need from a new upstream release to a
> > > stable Debian package in unstable?
> > >
> > > * How many "big" transitions will the upcoming changes cause? When should those
> > > happen? Can we do something to make them easier?
>
> Every new gecko, which we mainly have in xulrunner nowadays, needs some
> work, though I do hope 3.6 will require less work than 3.5 has and will.
>
> ATM, 3.5 is definitely not release-ready, and a lot of work remains to
> be done:
> - Build and test rdeps against newer version (applications such as
> epiphany[1], and plugins)
> - Patch liboggplay, liboggz, libvorbis, libtheora, etc. with the
> necessary patches, and make sure it doesn't break other packages.
> - Build xulrunner against these patched libraries instead of the bundled
> oned as currently is the case.
>
> Once we're done with this, the same will have to done again for 3.6. As
> the whole depends on more than myself alone, it's hard to give an
> evaluation on how long these transition will take. I'm not even able to
> say how long it will take me to get 3.5 itself in shape.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mike
>
> 1. Note that epiphany may be totally dropping gecko support in the near
> future (and I hear yelp and devhelp should, too), but that still leaves
> us with at least galeon and kazehakase.
>
>
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