1.0 Release Plan (discussion)

Racer · Post by **Racer** » July 7th, 2004, 1:57 pm

beta implies there may still be significant additions/changes to the program.
RC implies that only regressions, showstoppers, and security bugs will be fixed.

Its practical to allocate time for more than one RC since it is likely that, on such a huge project, something bad will slip through the cracks and get into an RC. However, if RC1 is "perfect", I'm sure the devs would be more than happy to release FireFox 1.0 early.

michaell522 · Post by **michaell522** » July 7th, 2004, 2:33 pm

Racer wrote:Its practical to allocate time for more than one RC since it is likely that, on such a huge project, something bad will slip through the cracks and get into an RC. However, if RC1 is "perfect", I'm sure the devs would be more than happy to release FireFox 1.0 early.

But they are guaranteeing that RC1 won't be "perfect", because they're already planning for a lot of necessary 1.0 work to happen after RC1.

The only way it could be early is if they decide that a lot of bugs currently marked as blockers aren't actually important.

sasquatch · Post by **sasquatch** » July 7th, 2004, 3:39 pm

AGSHender wrote:If the project were delayed while every feasible bug were fixed, Firefox v1.0 would never ship. Working as the QA person in a software company, I know full well that at some point you have to stop testing and say "OK, it's as good as it's going to get." Yes, there will always be bugs to fix. Some you find, some you don't. Most of them won't ever be experienced by people, and the devs probably aren't going to spend as much time on a bug that three people experience as opposed to one 30,000 experience. Those are the breaks of the software industry, not the Firefox devs.

Firefox v0.9 wasn't a flop. It was premature. There's a big difference and don't be too hasty to blur the lines.

It's about two months until the release of Firefox v1.0, and by staying on the branch Ben and the other devs have limited the number of major showstopper bugs that come their way. This is the time for fixing of the big ones. There are memory leaks that will likely never get fixed, but I can live with that....

STOP THERE.

For MANY, these memory "leaks" are "showstoppers". The focal point of this I thought was to be lean, trim, light, whatever you want to call it. These should be addressed here and now. These are NOT "pet bugs", but affect a lot of people and keep a lot from considering using this software. Sure it is easy (relatively) to fix smaller bugs, but I'd gladly wait 2 weeks without a single fix if they said they were "busy fixing memory bugs, due out soon". Also, why not get mmoy's code for optimizations into the code base (at THE VERY LEAST get it into the trunk now). This code really really really helps speed things up, and the work is done (for the most part).

Thanks for your time.

michaell522 · Post by **michaell522** » July 7th, 2004, 3:54 pm

sasquatch wrote:
AGSHender wrote: There are memory leaks that will likely never get fixed, but I can live with that....

STOP THERE. For MANY, these memory "leaks" are "showstoppers".

When you say "these" memory leaks, exactly which memory leaks are you talking about?

He's right that there are memory leaks which nobody cares about and may never get fixed. Little leaks aren't generally noticable and don't need to be a priority. Big leaks should obviously be dealt with. It doesn't make sense to talk about memory leaks in general, any more than it makes sense to say "all bugs should be fixed by 1.0".

sasquatch · Post by **sasquatch** » July 7th, 2004, 4:15 pm

I am referring to the many posts about this subject. I'm pretty sure there is even a "meta" bug tracking these other bugs.

I don't have it on hand now, but you can search as well as I, I'm sure.

Gotta go for now. Thanks for the reply.

michaell522 · Post by **michaell522** » July 7th, 2004, 6:57 pm

sasquatch wrote:I'm pretty sure there is even a "meta" bug tracking these other bugs.

I don't have it on hand now, but you can search as well as I, I'm sure.

I'm not aware of a meta bug as such. There's bug 131456, which (like the similar bugs and reports here) is pretty general. Really needs some people to spend some time with some better tools than Windows task manager to diagnose what is going on more specifically.

tpfkanep · Post by **tpfkanep** » July 8th, 2004, 4:00 am

mickeymike, you powers of comprehension is incomprehensible. Again I ask you, with reference to me

never say anything negative about anything wrong in Firefox.

to re-read my post at the top of this page.

PhoenixNostalgia · Post by **PhoenixNostalgia** » July 8th, 2004, 4:06 am

Seems 0.9.2 is on the burner right now. Getting hot for a Monday release I'm guessing? I'm posting with it right now.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... -01-0.9.2/

mikeymike · Post by **mikeymike** » July 8th, 2004, 5:33 am

I haven't noticed it actually. But considering I have heard a lot of people are seeing memory leak issues in Firefox, I think it's fair to assume there is one.

tpfkanep · Post by **tpfkanep** » July 8th, 2004, 5:49 am

There is one mikeymike! And a host of other things, which will be sorted out. Relax dude... Come here and give me a kiss and a hug!
>Kiss!<
>Hug!<
/sigh!

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » July 8th, 2004, 8:51 am

I understood that the 0.9 release was supposed to be feature complete. I haven't tried any nightlies > 0.9.1 but I hear about new features being added like URL bar secure site notification and search bar enhancements. Why are these things being added when there are stability issues to be addressed for 1.0?

michaell522 · Post by **michaell522** » July 8th, 2004, 8:53 am

Chris Cook wrote:I understood that the 0.9 release was supposed to be feature complete.

The important word there is "supposed"

I haven't tried any nightlies > 0.9.1 but I hear about new features being added like URL bar secure site notification and search bar enhancements. Not that I expect anyone to answer, but why are these things being added when there are stability issues to be addressed for 1.0?

Because they want the features in too, and a few things missed 0.9. Alos, the people working on this stuff aren't necessarily the same as the people that can/will work on the stability issues.

Post by **BenBasson** » July 8th, 2004, 10:12 am

Lower risk features aren't too much of a problem to move from 0.9 to early 0.9.0+ builds, the difference (a few weeks) it makes is pretty minimal. As for donating as a way to get memory leaks fixes? Put a bounty on appropriate bugs, if you're so inclined.

mikeymike · Post by **mikeymike** » July 8th, 2004, 11:01 am

Or Firefox could just go commercial, we pay for using it, and have done with the whole donation system...

sensemann · Post by **sensemann** » July 8th, 2004, 12:57 pm

if you don't see how donating could help fixing bug, then remember those bugs for which a "donation" was offered by users for the first one to fix it. That's a cool way imho. If all those who vote for bugs would spend one dollar per vote, then i'm sure more people would try to fix the bugs with lots of votes!