Nightly Firefox Win 64 bit Discussion

[Omega X]

It's fascinating how complicated all this is. It really makes me wonder how they managed to get "Curiosity" to take pictures of rocks on Mars. Of course NASA has lots more money, but their task appears to be proportionally more complicated.

NASA's software is most likely a lot more simplified to keep complexity and costs down.

[TheVisitor]

Very interesting. Was reading along on IRC the discussion of turning off PGO for win 64bit builds. Someone asked how many 64bit users were on Nightly 64bit.

Answer: 35k of out of 75k, 18.0a1 windows

I was really surprised....

[Ver Greeneyes]

You never know, if more people are surprised it might get them to reconsider the tier 2 status of the 64-bit Windows builds. Right now these builds get basically no automated test coverage at all, which is why it took so long for this startup crash to get noticed.

[TheVisitor]

64 bit Nightly has been kicked off on cset: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/31ae286fff78

No words on if it will update, or you will have do it manually, and whether you get a partial or full download.

[joeg]

NASA's software is most likely a lot more simplified to keep complexity and costs down.

Yes, I see what you mean. They're only dealing with one set of - albeit complicated - hardware and have no real "compatibility" issues to confront. Furthermore, I guess they don't have to worry about things like "attractiveness", js speed, plugins written by outsiders, and all the other things that cause FF programmers headaches.

Thanks for forcing me to think about the issue more deeply.

[Omega X]

Not only that but they had half a decade to tie the individual systems together and test them appropriately. The last rover was launched in 2003.

[KennS]

Win64 build as of this morning - no crash on startup.

[joeg]

This post originally appeared here -> viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2561591&p=12337373#p12337373, but I obviously posted it in the wrong place.

Anyway, ...

This afternoon (01 Oct 2012, about 4PM Berlin, Germany time), I manually downloaded and set up (zip version) this build: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 ID:20121001061217 CSet: 4a83e0291d58

It works fine.

Unfortunately, I can't find where I downloaded it from. It was NOT from here.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... est-trunk/

If it helps any, the folder name had the word "incoming" and right above it was a folder called "non-pgo".

As a follower of this discussion, I intentionally didn't take the "non-pgo" folder to see if what I got would crash. It didn't.

The time of the firefox.exe file is 07:09 this morning. I'm pretty sure that's PDT in the US, and not the time on my machine.

Is there any way to trace where I got the download file from?

I'm also wondering (out loud) whether it will update tomorrow (yes, I'm on the Nightly channel).

Thanks.
---------------------
Addendum
Out of interest, I just (midnight, Berlin time) replaced the build mentioned above with this one ->Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0 ID:20121001104759 CSet: 80c6003335af. I downloaded it from here -> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... try-win64/

There were others in the "try-builds" folder; I took it because I know the name dzbarsky.

Does anyone know how the two builds I've tried today differ? They both appear to work fine.

And my last question for now: At whom are the "try-builds" aimed?

Again, thanks.

Addendum 2
Never being one to let grass grow under my feet, I just sent an email to dzbarsky.

Among other things, he wrote: "No, I don't think try builds run updates - that would disable the changes they're testing.  I would recommend not running try builds, they can have all kinds of security holes and annoying rendering bugs."
---------------------------------
I'm going back to the build I downloaded this morning.

[joeg]

Hey, I just managed to crash the 64-bit nightly, but I'm not sure if it's the version I'm using or the Abduction extension I tried to use to take the screenshot.

Anyway, I was on this page, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19464117 , and I wanted to use Abduction 3.0.14 to take a screenshot of the whole page. It crashed at the point of saving the screenshot.

Does anyone have another extension that allows you to save the whole page who could try it? By the way, Abduction only allows saving as a .png file.

P.S. It worked fine on Fx 3.6.29 (Namoroka) using the same extension.

P.P.S. I can make screenshots of smaller pages, but the one I tried to capture was apparently too big somehow. Should I file a bug?

[Ver Greeneyes]

Try builds test patches from bugs, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're based off the most recent state of mozilla-central or mozilla-inbound. They're mostly for checking that the patches didn't cause any test failures, and aren't normally intended for public use (they might be intended for testing, if that was requested in the relevant bug). And they're pretty likely to be broken in some way - certainly a lot more likely than Nightly or even the hourly tinderbox builds.

[joeg]

Try builds test patches from bugs, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're based off the most recent state of mozilla-central or mozilla-inbound. They're mostly for checking that the patches didn't cause any test failures, and aren't normally intended for public use (they might be intended for testing, if that was requested in the relevant bug). And they're pretty likely to be broken in some way - certainly a lot more likely than Nightly or even the hourly tinderbox builds.

Thanks. Yes, this was the gist of dzbarsky's message, too. Can you, please, point me to a "good" 64-bit build from today? Was a "real Nightly" actually built?

[TheVisitor]

Try builds test patches from bugs, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're based off the most recent state of mozilla-central or mozilla-inbound. They're mostly for checking that the patches didn't cause any test failures, and aren't normally intended for public use (they might be intended for testing, if that was requested in the relevant bug). And they're pretty likely to be broken in some way - certainly a lot more likely than Nightly or even the hourly tinderbox builds.

Thanks. Yes, this was the gist of dzbarsky's message, too. Can you, please, point me to a "good" 64-bit build from today? Was a "real Nightly" actually built?

Today's Nightly is here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... a-central/

Since you have been bouncing around from different builds; Try/inbound builds/ and not sure what else you are very likely NOT on the Nightly update Channel and the build you got from 'Try' will NOT update no matter how much you try.

You will have to manually download the build from the link I gave you above.

Getting builds from Mozilla-Inbound also do not create a Nightly. The only Nightly's that you should be using are on Mozilla-central. Those you can get from the 'latest trunk folder' without going on a hunting/fishing expedition.

[joeg]

... You will have to manually download the build from the link I gave you above...

I have, and I'll stay with the "normal" Nightly. It's just that I had some free time this afternoon.

Thank you very, very much.

By the way, I can't make the screenshot mentioned above with this build either. It looks like it really is a bug.

[joeg]

This thread is eerily quiet given the problems people have reported with some recent x64 Nightly builds. I'm happy to be able to say that I haven't experienced any issues.

Does anyone know the status of the 64-bit beyond the fact that PGO has been turned off and (AFAIK) is still off? I've subscribed to some of the relevant bugs, but I haven't seen anything lately.

Thanks.

[speciesx]

PGO Build should be back soon.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795594