Firefox 35.0 Aurora non-developer edition?

[Callek]

Ok, so firstly, I mostly skimmed this thread.

My background:
* SeaMonkey
- I'm the primary release engineer
- L10n coordinator
- Member of the SeaMonkey Council
* Firefox/MoCo
- Release Engineer

This thread is the first I've heard about possibly entirely dropping aurora, and that piece seemed to have come directly from a news post a few days before the dev edition came out (which predated any of our official announcements)

Sooo, what I know:

Code: Select all

Trunk --> Dev Edition [Aurora] --> Beta --> Release
     +6w -->                +6w     -->   +6w    --> +6w

I have not heard of anything indicating otherwise. You can even revert to "aurora" from dev edition if you want (all it is is an aurora + a few extensions/theme, that uses a new profile --- prefs can set that added stuff off)

There is tangentially conversation on what it might mean to get rid of aurora, or change the cadences a bit (e.g. ship beta's from the aurora repo instead of the beta repo) etc etc. None of those are set in stone, nor actually have current data to support them.

Once the next cycle rolls around, Dev edition itself does not ride the trains, it will remain on what is currently aurora, while the gecko/core code will ride on to beta.

Hope that helps.

[patrickjdempsey]

Thank you Callek. So this is just Aurora rebranded + extensions? Sure would have been nice if someone at Mozilla had clarified that at some point, anywhere.

[Callek]

Thank you Callek. So this is just Aurora rebranded + extensions? Sure would have been nice if someone at Mozilla had clarified that at some point, anywhere.

Well, they did, but depending on target audience:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Fir ... er_Edition

and

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/mozil ... r-edition/

Had some details

[patrickjdempsey]

Right, but the first link was purposefully obscured prior to the "big event" (which I'm sure was very exciting) so that none of us knew what the heck was going on. Also, the early draft of the MDN page that was apparently accidentally public for a few days didn't really explain what it was. In fact, it's still not really clear because the informational page about the Release Process it links to still shows Aurora everywhere.

[the-edmeister]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Developer_Edition is fine, but there was no mention made of what people who were already using Aurora would see - not a separate Profile, which was created but was not used if you already were using Aurora with a unique Profile. Also, most of the postings here were made by existing Aurora users who would get the "update" to Web Developer Edition thinking it would be a "normal" update and not something completely new.

Considering that the "snippets" feature seems to be able to be controlled via channels, why couldn't Mozilla send out a warning snippet last week that a big change was coming om Nov 10?


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[LoudNoise]

Because Ed, if you truly cared about the project you would have read all about it in the blog you won't know exists until about three days from now

[patrickjdempsey]

By which time when you purposefully went looking for it, you couldn't find it. Seriously. I DID LOOK, because I was expecting it. I couldn't find it. Nothing. Nada. It's on none of the "official" pages that I looked at, and links to the "appropriate" blogs don't come up on any of the top search results. A word to the wise: don't throw a compulsory surprise party and then invite no-one to it.

I really just feel bad for the random user who downloads this week and ends up stuck on a random "special" branch with no notification, for no particular reason.

[rsx11m]

don't throw a compulsory surprise party and then invite no-one to it.

Nice analogy. Yeah, the secrecy around all the changes on aurora are the main problem here and not really in the spirit of an open project where everybody is supposed to be involved (to the level they wish) or at least can follow the decision making and implementation - "employee only" bug reports and last-second blogs and even developers' pages certainly are counterproductive, in the end fueling semi-random rumors as we have seen (which hopefully are just that).

[therube]

I went to the Windows 9 Anniversary Party but no one showed up

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r296382 ... ry-release

[StoneRyno]

I really just feel bad for the random user who downloads this week and ends up stuck on a random "special" branch with no notification, for no particular reason.

That would be me and my reason for posting in this thread and I hope someone can answer the question. I don't have time to read blogs and forum posts and what not for this and other things all the time. I do check in on them when I find a problem to see how I can contribute to help it get fixed. And so when I got prompted to update I did as I always do and was blindsided when the whole visual look was new and my tabs and everything was gone. My first thought was the plugins were broke so I went to their forum and posted thinking something there needed to be fixed. And then looked on here and found this thread to discover it created a new profile. But what I couldn't find and still don't think I have found how to migrate the existing profile to be used with this new aurora ("developer edition"). And other than the visual changes I'm not sure what is different from the existing aurora with plugins I have and it. I'm assuming at this point I want the "developer edition" newness and not the aurora from just before it. I don't have to use the developer tools very often but there have been times where they were needed. So I'm still half confused at this point, and until I understand what is what I can't move forward to the latest version. I am hoping someone can shed more light on that for me here. And how I migrate my existing profile.

[LoudNoise]

By which time when you purposefully went looking for it, you couldn't find it. Seriously. I DID LOOK, because I was expecting it. I couldn't find it. Nothing. Nada. It's on none of the "official" pages that I looked at, and links to the "appropriate" blogs don't come up on any of the top search results. A word to the wise: don't throw a compulsory surprise party and then invite no-one to it.

I really just feel bad for the random user who downloads this week and ends up stuck on a random "special" branch with no notification, for no particular reason.

Which is sort of my point. Mozilla has always been so transparent that you cannot see anything. They have be talking about this for over a a year. The reason I know this is because someone used the term for the new development schema in one of the threads here and I Googled it. If it hadn't been for that I would have never found it.

That said, it isn't really all that unusual. Hell, the only reason I knew about Australis early on was because, like all of the mods, I frequent most of the forum. A fair amount of the regulars here were blindsided by it.

[patrickjdempsey]

That's exactly why I don't get the point of the whole surprise tactic. If relatively well informed users completely missed Australis... then there's really no need to manufacture any extra layer of secrecy.

[LoudNoise]

The secrecy was limited to a marketing party that was so badly presented that no one noticed, An invitation to a circle jerk is never well received. When the party is a surprise by the same folks it will be simply ignored.

[the-edmeister]

Because Ed, if you truly cared about the project you would have read all about it in the blog you won't know exists until about three days from now

Excellent!

So I'm still half confused at this point, and until I understand what is what I can't move forward to the latest version. I am hoping someone can shed more light on that for me here. And how I migrate my existing profile.

Open Tools > Options -> General and play with the first pref. - Allow Firefox Developer Edition and Firefox to run at the same time It should allow you to "toggle" back and forth between the Aurora and Developer Edition, with a restart after changing the state of that pref.

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[StoneRyno]

Open Tools > Options -> General and play with the first pref. - Allow Firefox Developer Edition and Firefox to run at the same time It should allow you to "toggle" back and forth between the Aurora and Developer Edition, with a restart after changing the state of that pref.

This much I gather but what does this mean? Does this just change between profiles in the new version ("developer edition")? So I have all the new features and my existing profile when that setting is checked? This is more or less what my confusion is. Because I want all the new stuff and my existing profile together. Everything i have read, which isn't much, trying to answer my confusion implies that I have to have one or the other. Which doesn't make any sense to me.