299004 - MOZ_MILESTONE_RELEASE should be a configure flag and should be used for final releases.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect, P1)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Currently, there is a hidden variable MOZ_MILESTONE_RELEASE which makes the GRE
buildid "1.7.3" instead of "1.7.3_1234567890". Right now you have to set it in
the environment, which sucks, and we haven't used it for any mozilla 1.7.x
release. It should become a first-class configure flag and should be used for
final release builds.

Comment 1

[Chase Phillips]

"should be used for final releases"?  I presume you are not advocating
reconfiguring every build system per-release number bump?

Comment 2

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I don't know what you mean by that: What I mean is that nightly builds should be
configured without --enable-milestone-buildid but when we spin the final builds
they should be configured with --enable-milestone-buildid. I'm not sure what I
think about release candidate builds. We definitely don't want to have non-final
GREs floating around in the wild with "final" buildids.

Comment 3

[Chase Phillips]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I don't know what you mean by that: What I mean is that nightly builds should
> be configured without --enable-milestone-buildid but when we spin the final 
> builds they should be configured with --enable-milestone-buildid.

I mean it's still questionable that this will be used for final releases -- the
cost of managing these changes over time isn't 0.  Perhaps start by addressing
what new need there is for such a change?

Comment 4

[Benjamin Smedberg]

It's not a "new" need, this variable was introduced in mozilla1.3 so that
embedders could find the GRE by version number ("1.8" or "1.8.1"). The
<version>_<buildid> hack was added so that nightly builds don't conflict with
releases (installing a nightly build won't hose your regular milestone release).

We absolutely have to make some distinction between nightlies and final releases
for embedders; how we feed the build system this distinction is up to you,
although I greatly prefer a configure flag to an environment variable.

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: Add --enable-milestone-release

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

when we decided on the solution, we can evaluate taking this but we're not going
to block the release of Firefox beta on this. 

Comment 7

[Chase Phillips]

Comment on attachment 190439 [details] [diff] [review]
Add --enable-milestone-release

Clearing my request queue.  Let's discuss the process implications before we
review patches for implementing it.

Comment 8

[Chase Phillips]

Apologies for the upcoming bug spam.  I'm going to attempt to narrow down an
infamously hard to reproduce focus issue.

Comment 9

[Chase Phillips]

Comment on attachment 190439 [details] [diff] [review]
Add --enable-milestone-release

Changing this bug back to normal.  Again, sorry for the spam.

Comment 10

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This got hacked after a fashion in bug 324690 and I'll file another bug to use a textfile for the buildid in the 1.9 timeframe.