689936 - stop using latest-$version symlinks on ftp

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Release Engineering :: General, defect)

Description

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Currently, we have a latest-$version symlink for every "major" version of Firefox, like this:
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox    10 Sep 27 14:31 latest -> latest-7.0
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     8 Dec 24  2010 latest-2.0 -> 2.0.0.20
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox    16 Dec 24  2010 latest-3.0 -> 3.0.19-real-real
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     6 Apr 28 15:11 latest-3.5 -> 3.5.19
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     6 Sep 27 12:34 latest-3.6 -> 3.6.23
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     5 Apr 28 14:07 latest-4.0 -> 4.0.1
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     5 Aug  2 06:30 latest-5.0 -> 5.0.1
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     5 Sep  6 10:19 latest-6.0 -> 6.0.2
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ffxbld firefox     3 Sep 27 07:58 latest-7.0 -> 7.0

I don't think this makes sense in the rapid release world. I think we should:
* Delete latest-4.0, latest-5.0, latest-6.0, and latest-7.0
* Link 'latest' directly to 7.0
* Update 'latest' going forward.

I think it makes sense to keep the 3.6 and earlier links, because they pre-date rapid release.

Comment 1

[u279076]

(In reply to Ben Hearsum [:bhearsum] from comment #0)
> * Delete latest-4.0, latest-5.0, latest-6.0, and latest-7.0
> * Link 'latest' directly to 7.0
> * Update 'latest' going forward.
> 
> I think it makes sense to keep the 3.6 and earlier links, because they
> pre-date rapid release.

I would go one step further and remove the latest symlinks for 3.5 and 2.0 since we no longer support those releases.

Comment 2

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

(In reply to Anthony Hughes, Mozilla QA (irc: ashughes) from comment #1) 
> I would go one step further and remove the latest symlinks for 3.5 and 2.0
> since we no longer support those releases.

+1

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

sounds good to me.

Comment 4

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

would we keep latest-trunk, latest-beta, latest-aurora ? Those will remain useful into the future, the version-specific ones not so much.

I don't know why we'd want "latest" links to releases -- get those from the release directories if you want that (iow, latest-1.9.2 seems more useful to me than latest-3.6).

Comment 5

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

(In reply to Daniel Veditz from comment #4)
> would we keep latest-trunk, latest-beta, latest-aurora ? Those will remain
> useful into the future, the version-specific ones not so much.

latest-trunk and latest-aurora will be untouched, assuming you're talking about the ones here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/. We don't have a latest-beta symlink anywhere.

> I don't know why we'd want "latest" links to releases -- get those from the
> release directories if you want that (iow, latest-1.9.2 seems more useful to
> me than latest-3.6).

Yeah, it made more sense in the days when we were supported branches for a long time. That's why I want to get rid of them now :).

Comment 6

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

Comment #0 sounds good to me.

Comment 7

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

I think we have quorum, unless I misunderstood dveditz's comment. I'll drop them tomorrow, including the 2.0 and 3.5 ones, unless I hear an objection.

Comment 8

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

I'm fine with removing the release symlinks, thought you were talking about nightlies.

Comment 9

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Ran the following to make it so:
rm latest-2.0 latest-3.0 latest-3.5 latest-4.0 latest-5.0 latest-6.0 latest-7.0 latest
ln -s 7.0.1 latest

Also published a blog post to let the world know: http://blog.mozilla.com/bhearsum/archives/241