656590 - Implement channel selector UI for updates

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

As said in the bug where Firefox implemented this (bug 644517):

(In reply to comment #0)
> For the upcoming versions of Firefox, we want users to be able to opt in to
> experimental and beta channels if they want to, via the same dialog that
> holds the version information (currently the About window).
> 
> The user should be able to move freely between experimental, beta and final
> release update channels, and we should give a mechanism to restart when you
> change the channel.
> 
> Some explicit non-goals:
> 
> * We don't allow people to switch to nightly builds from this dialog, since
> they are for developers, and should be a separate download (and arguably
> shouldn't even use the same profile, but that's a separate issue).
> 
> * We don't allow people to switch to project branches using this selector.
> If someone wants to write an add-on that does this, that's fine — but we're
> not going to do it in the core implementation.

Comment 1

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

I won't be able to look into this until Monday in the evening. I took a quick look at this and it seems not to be too much of a big piece of work, but I'm off for the week-end, so this will have to wait until I'm back, sorry :-).

Comment 2

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

Attachment: First try

So I finally got the time to look into this. Here's the required bits and pieces to port the functionality from Firefox. As far as I can tell, the UI looks fine. In order to test this, the best way is to apply the patch, run make chrome, and then modify objdir/mozilla/dist/bin/default/prefs/channel-prefs.js so that the only pref in that file is one of "release", "beta" or "miramar".

I don't really know how to build something that has the updater enabled, so I feel like changing the channel doesn't really do much, but that's probably due to the fact that I'm applying this patch to my own build.

If you want a try-server run for this, feel free to ask. Sorry for the delay, hope we'll be able to get this in time.

Comment 3

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

Comment on attachment 534572 [details] [diff] [review]
First try

Blake, you might be able to look into this, and r+ it, since I think Standard8 is busy moving out :-).

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Comment on attachment 534572 [details] [diff] [review]
First try

Ok, this looks fine to me, with the exception of s/miramar/aurora/ for the time being (aurora is probably going to be wrong as well, but afaict we can change that without affecting strings).

I've tested what I can, but I believe that AUS isn't quite set up right. As we're right on the merge point, I'm going to push this in a few minutes with the mentioned name change, and we can follow-up later if necessary.

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/2171a0890992