Will Firefox follow Thunderbird to drop zip-builds?

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
jemm
Posts: 60
Joined: January 15th, 2004, 4:06 am
Location: Estonia, Europe

Will Firefox follow Thunderbird to drop zip-builds?

Post by jemm »

Will Firefox follow Thunderbird to drop zip-builds for win32? I hope not. That would ba a major mistake.

Some reasons why zipped builds are necessary:
- they are needed to create preconfigured corporate install and deployment packs as described <a href="http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=45884">here</a>
- they are needed for portable versions of FF and TB (e.g. on memory sticks) as offered <a href="http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/">here</a>
- extremely useful for browsing in public hotspots (hotels, cafe's etc) where only IE is installed and users do not have installation rights (just download, unpack and run)
- many users like to keep their windows systems as clear and clean as possible and prefer software that do not need installation (e.g. I use Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC Media Player, all tools from Sysinternals, Xenu, VirtualDub and some 10 other titles in this manner)
- developers and testers
- and hopefully many other reasons to be described by others :)
Last edited by jemm on March 23rd, 2005, 1:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
jemm
Posts: 60
Joined: January 15th, 2004, 4:06 am
Location: Estonia, Europe

Post by jemm »

There is now a reason for dropping zip's <a href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/chase/archives/2005/03/wondering_why_t.html">here</a>. But still I don't see that dropping is justified - I believe there are more people who benefit from zipped builds than those who had crashes when mixing up installer and zipped installations (I wish this could be somehow measured).

Keeping zipped builds only for nightlies is not a solutions - since most of the uses decribed hereinbefore require a stable realease to be used.
User avatar
sjvilla79
Posts: 339
Joined: February 4th, 2004, 4:04 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Post by sjvilla79 »

dropping zip builds is a bad idea. it totally blows monkeys.
jeezus
Posts: 1
Joined: March 23rd, 2005, 2:56 am

Post by jeezus »

I need release-zip-builds (firefox and thunderbird)... just for the records...

Hope they will be back soon...
UltraZelda64
Posts: 18
Joined: September 20th, 2004, 5:44 pm

Post by UltraZelda64 »

If they do go, I won't be upset... I prefer the installer, instead of choosing a directory to unzip to, then manually creating shortcuts...
jemm
Posts: 60
Joined: January 15th, 2004, 4:06 am
Location: Estonia, Europe

Post by jemm »

UltraZelda64 wrote:I prefer the installer, instead of choosing a directory to unzip to, then manually creating shortcuts...

UltraZelda64, with zip builds under win32 you should proceed as follows:
- remove all files of previous version from installation directory
- unpack all files of new version to the same installation directory
- shortcuts should be created only once (with the first installation); as with next installations they will refer to the same directory and executable, then there is no need to change them
User avatar
BenBasson
Moderator
Posts: 13671
Joined: February 13th, 2004, 5:49 am
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by BenBasson »

This kinda sucks. I always use zip builds on my own computer. Still, if they're issuing nightly builds, we should (in theory) still be able to grab the equivalent nightly for a release... right?
User avatar
Peter(6)
Posts: 13011
Joined: September 4th, 2003, 1:26 am
Location: Maassluis, The Netherlands

Post by Peter(6) »

It would totally suck if that would happen.
I have a few 100 hourly builds to make it easier to trace regressions.
Installing/uninstalling compared to the simple delete and unzip would simply take far too much of my time
nightly build threads 20040225 (FF 0.8.0+) - 20120331 (FF14a)
ntd
Posts: 44
Joined: January 15th, 2004, 1:30 pm

Post by ntd »

Peter-- It's just for official releases, not nightlys...and even for official releases, people can get the recent nightly zip (or build your own or get a 3rd party build) and you can approximate the same thing.

Second of all, the original author made a point about corporate installs...msi files are much more useful for corporate installation than zip builds ever were.

Chase's Blog:
If you're a Mozilla developer and love the .zip files, rest assured they aren't going away completely. While we won't issue the .zip package with the rest of the major release files, we will still issue these packages in their standard nightly form.
Last edited by ntd on March 23rd, 2005, 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jack
Posts: 6859
Joined: December 26th, 2002, 4:53 pm

Post by Jack »

I suppose it's now up to someone else with the Microsoft compiler and loads of bandwidth to start making their own zipped release builds.
User avatar
Mini-Geek
Posts: 1239
Joined: February 7th, 2005, 8:08 pm
Location: Bulverde (near San Antonio), Texas, USA

Post by Mini-Geek »

I personally wouldn't really mind if they only released installer files for major releases, I would have a problem with them only releasing nightlies in installers though since I install them in directories not near my good Firefox 1.0.1 installation so that I don't mess it up, I understand that I could tell it to install in a directory somewhere far-off but I prefer being able to get ZIP builds for nightlies, just yesterday I got the ZIP nightly to see the new options window, just for fun ;)
just thought I'd give my two cents to show that not everyone in the Firefox world would hate installer-only major releases
Playing computers since 6 months old,
Tim
Fx 2.0.0.1 on WinXP - Forum Rules
User avatar
BenBasson
Moderator
Posts: 13671
Joined: February 13th, 2004, 5:49 am
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by BenBasson »

Jack wrote:I suppose it's now up to someone else with the Microsoft compiler and loads of bandwidth to start making their own zipped release builds.

Or we could just use the appropriate nightly, as I suggested :)
User avatar
Peter(6)
Posts: 13011
Joined: September 4th, 2003, 1:26 am
Location: Maassluis, The Netherlands

Post by Peter(6) »

ntd wrote:Peter-- It's just for official releases, not nightlys...and even for official releases, people can get the recent nightly zip (or build your own or get a 3rd party build) and you can approximate the same thing.
ok, np than, I don't use milestones anyway ;-)
nightly build threads 20040225 (FF 0.8.0+) - 20120331 (FF14a)
jemm
Posts: 60
Joined: January 15th, 2004, 4:06 am
Location: Estonia, Europe

Post by jemm »

ntd wrote:Peter-- It's just for official releases, not nightlys...and even for official releases, people can get the recent nightly zip (or build your own or get a 3rd party build) and you can approximate the same thing.


Compilation of your own builds is maybe ok for huge corporations with well-staffed IT-departments. For a typical small business of 50-500 workers that is well beyond the scope what IT-support staff should and can do.

ntd wrote:Second of all, the original author made a point about corporate installs...msi files are much more useful for corporate installation than zip builds ever were.


The main point in zipped builds is that you can 100% preconfigure them and with one script install remotely to hundreds of PC's without any human interaction and without any Microsoft specific installation tools. Can you do that with msi?
User avatar
BenBasson
Moderator
Posts: 13671
Joined: February 13th, 2004, 5:49 am
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by BenBasson »

jemm wrote:The main point in zipped builds is that you can 100% preconfigure them and with one script install remotely to hundreds of PC's without any human interaction and without any Microsoft specific installation tools. Can you do that with msi?

Well you could just install to one PC, then zip up the folder afterwards, profile included if you wish. Nothing's stopping you making your own zip :)
Locked