Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 Code & String Freeze Dates (update)
Mike Beltzner
Hey everyone,
After talking with Axel, Connor and Damon, we're setting slightly new
code freeze dates for Beta 2. Rationale is below, but in a nutshell,
we feel that these new dates will remove the pressure to land string-
only patches without a significant impact on the shipping schedule for
Beta 2. All times are 11:59pm PDT/PST.
Thursday, October 30th - "slushy" string freeze: goal is to have
all string-related work done by this date
Tuesday, November 4th - "slushy" freeze: all beta 2 code done, late
string updates may still be accepted but require ui-r
Thursday, November 6th - firm code & string freeze: bugs &
regressions found in nightlies resolved
We'll be looking to start en-US builds on November 10th and l10n
builds on November 11th, and release
What This Means For You, The Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 Developer:
- you should still be trying to get any string-related work done by
EOD Thursday, October 30th
- code freeze is still EOD Tuesday, November 4th
- if your code-with-strings can't land by Thursday, October 30th,
don't bother with "string-only" patches
And Now, The Thrilling Rationale:
With code freeze for Beta 2 coming up I've been talking to people
about how we expect the freeze to be "slushy" (as is usual for our
betas), with the tree held closed while we hammer our regressions and
bugs discovered by our nightly audience before running builds. On
average, these "slushy freezes" last 4-7 days.
In the past, what has happened is that we freeze hard for strings, and
then ask localizers to get everything done by code freeze, and then
take a week to actually freeze up. As a result, we often get "string
only" patches landing on the string freeze date, only to discover we
would have had time for another l10n cycle. Instead of taking late
l10n changes to existing strings (which has the localizers do work
twice) we decided to try this different approach whereby we'd aim to
have the bulk of the strings ready for tomorrow, and then accept
another set of string changes up until the Tuesday code freeze. This
way localizers can work on one set of string translations over the
weekend of Oct 31 - Nov 3, and then have a couple more to do by the
end of that week. Axel agreed that this was a more efficient way to
partition the work.
cheers,
mike
Axel Hecht
Hi all,
after some analysis, we found an omission in what beltzner proposed.
There are no changes for mozilla-central, but with that repo having both
the code and the string slushy ending on the 6th, we need a later code
freeze for l10n-central.
Thus, l10n-central code freeze is November 9th, 11:59 PST.
Axel