99050 - [RFE] A net installer that downloads the latest nightly

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, enhancement)

Description

[Sebastian Späth]

It would be great if a Windows net installer could be provided which simply 
downloads the latest nightly binaries, instead of a specific day. It would make 
automatization of my update process way easier.

Comment 1

[Henrik Gemal]

It can be done. The build process "just" needs to copy the XPI files to the 
latest directory, which it doesn't do currently. And then you need to change 
CONFIG.INI to have the entry "url" to point to that directory...

BTW: Severity already shows RFE...

Comment 2

[Ashley Bischoff (blog at handcoding.com)]

No dupes found. Marking NEW.

Sebastian: For what it's worth, some automation can be achieved for win32
through using wget, a command-line ftp program:
http://www.intraware.com/free/wget.html

Using that, builds can be downloaded from the Mozilla ftp site:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/

I have considered writing a batch file using this approach, to assist in my own
daily update process. If you like, we could work together on that.

Comment 3

[Sebastian Späth]

You don't need to actually copy the .xpi files. I see 2 possibilities: 
1)Either you simply symlink the .xpi files to the corresponding directory or
2) you have the installer figure the correct directory from the current date
itself (doesn't know if this would work with the hours in the directory though).

Ijust don't see the sense of downloading a net installer which does nothing more
than sucking exclusively one specific nightly.

Comment 4

[Ashley Bischoff (blog at handcoding.com)]

Sean: bugzilla-daemon says that I changed this from NEW to ASSIGNED, but I did
not mean to do so. Feel free to change it back.

Comment 5

[Sean Su]

Sebastian,

The fix is to simply have the installer always point to the "latest" url and 
deliver the .xpi files there for every nightly build.  The problem we ran into 
previously with this scenario is that there is not necessarily a build every 
night due to frequent problems beyond our control (network/power outtage, cvs 
server problems, bad checkins, etc...).  People would then mistake the bits in 
the "latest" url to be from that day.

Also if someone wanted to test a previous nightly build (not the "latest" 
build), they would have a difficult time trying to get back to the old builds 
because the installer would always download from the "latest" url.

Reassigning to Granrose.  He's the manager of the release team who can decide 
this.

Comment 6

[Daniel (Leaf) Nunes]

tracy, do you have some script that pulls the installer from the most recent
date-stamped directory on ftp.mozilla.org? If so, that might be all the reporter
needs to get on with his life.

Comment 7

[Jon Granrose]

not going to happen.  we've enough things to work on without making things
unnecessarily complicated.  Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the latest directory
to begin with because it can cause confusion.  The idea of making the stub
installer point to that makes more work for leaf, increases complexity, and
increases the likelihood of confusion for little, if any, benefit.  You get the
stub installer from latest-trunk and it's up for it to know where to go for the
files.  Once it's on your system you still have to run it so whatever automation
you're using to do that shouldn't care where it's getting the xpi files from, it
just cares about where it's supposed to click and type.

Comment 8

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

peterj has written a script that will retrieve the latest build.  It is not
currently publicly available but he plans publishing it to
komodo.mozilla.org/autosmoke in the next couple of days.  Keep an eye out on
that page for a link to his script.

note: the shell script I use for linux allows me to retrieve any build of my
choice; mozilla or netscape, trunk or branch, installer or full package by build
ID number.

Comment 9

[Grace Bush]

verified

Comment 10

[Olav Vitters]

*** Bug 126945 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Georg Wild]

What about using something like cvs (don't know whether cvs can handle binaries)?

Comment 12

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 145025 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Olav Vitters]

*** Bug 165457 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***