449386 - Update FF3.1 alphas and betas users to FF3.1

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Release Engineering :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[u88484]

From the Firefox 3.1 Meeting Minutes on 2008-08-05:
Build
  * FF3.1b1 will be done manually. 
      * no updates from alpha -> beta 

To me that means no update to FF3.1b1 from the alpha, which was FF3.1a1 not the beta channel of 3.0.*, which would make a heck of a lot more sense to me.  Why would there be no updates.  That looks really bad on Mozilla to do, especially when you'd think early adopters of a developers build would be wanted to be upgraded easily to a beta.  Plus, it tests out the system to make sure everything is A.O.K.

Plus, even if the builds have to be built manually, it is not like there are a crap load of locales to hand build for.  Probably just en-us anyway so creating the diff's and update testing shouldn't be all that hard for the three OSes.

Even having the beta localized, the alpha wasn't so there still wouldn't anymore work then to create the diffs and test the update.  I just find it ridiculous to waste bandwidth and not utilize a perfectly working update system that beats any other browsers and is a huge part of why users love Firefox...being able to easily update and know that Firefox will inform them when an update is available.

Comment 1

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

A few points:
* Historically, we do not provide updates from Alpha to Alpha or Alpha to Beta.
* When Firefox 3.1 is released, all users on Alphas will receive updates to the release version. We will not be permanently abandoning Alpha users.
* Alphas are "Developer Previews". The target audience (and most likely, userbase) are more than likely capable of downloading 3.1b1 when it is released.

I'm not saying it's totally worthless, and we may indeed do updates for alphas come the next version, when we have a full, working, release automation system. For Firefox 3.1 though, this is WONTFIX, IMHO.

Comment 2

[John O'Duinn [:joduinn] (please use "needinfo?" flag)]

To be clear: the meeting was talking about what is being done specifically for the FF3.1b1 release... and those notes are accurate; FF3.1b1 will not provide updates from earlier FF3.1 alphas. This is similar to what we did with FF3.0 - beta1, beta2 did not provide any updates for FF3.0alphas.

Before the official FF3.1 release, we would be providing updates from all FF3.1 alphas and betas. This is what we've done in FF3.0 and other previous Firefox releases and is our plan for FF3.1 also.

Updating summary and pushing to Future.

Comment 3

[John O'Duinn [:joduinn] (please use "needinfo?" flag)]

Reading again in triage... As part of our usual release process, we generate updates from all alphas and betas forward to the latest beta/release candidates, and then to release bits at release time. The original comment from meeting about the specifics of 3.1a1 -> 3.1b1 remain true, and this happened during FF3.0 also. 

Closing as WEWILLDOTHISANYWAYASUSUAL. If I've missed something, please reopen, ok?

Comment 4

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Moving closed Future bugs into Release Engineering in preparation for removing the Future component.