Firefox for Mobile: Rapid Release Process
Mark Finkle
adopt the same schedule-driven release plan. Currently, mobile is
building “Fennec 6.0a1” nightly builds from mozilla-central. We plan
to create an Aurora branding and start creating “Fennec Aurora 5.0a2”
nightly builds from mozilla-aurora. While desktop Firefox is looking
to create a significant user base on Aurora, Mobile is not actively
promoting Aurora, since our user base is smaller and we’d like to
focus user testing on the nightly release. We will re-evaluate this
position as our user base grows.
Since we are sticking to the same release schedule as desktop Firefox,
we will be releasing a mobile “Firefox 5 Beta 1” on or around May
17th. Normally, we would be building the beta from mozilla-beta, but
we hit a snag for this cycle and will be using a one-time only
fallback repository. In order to make sure things go smoothly, we’ll
do a pre-beta build sometime next week, ahead of the official beta.
The plan is to put the beta releases in the Android Market. The beta
releases will install alongside the final releases, but will have beta-
specific branding, to minimize confusion with the final releases.
Desktop Firefox has a channel-switcher, allowing users to easily move
between Aurora and Beta channels. Mobile has no plans to create a
switcher. Each release has it’s own profile and run separate from any
other installed releases.
