Work on Firefox 4?

[JAB Creations]

As Firefox 2 is now completed what will the folks who worked on the branch be doing now? Will they join the work on the trunk or start work on a branch? I don't imagine work would happen on a branch based off of an unfinished trunk?

What will Firefox 2's developers work on?
When will Firefox 4's development begin?
Do people begin work on a new trunk before the the current one in progress (1.9 at the time of this post) is finished?

[BenBasson]

They'll probably work on the trunk and help development towards 3.0 from the feature / chrome side of things.

[dickvl]

As soon as the Fx 3.0 is splitt off then the development of Fx 4.0 will start as the next trunk.
See: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Global:1.9_Trun ... ranch_Plan

[Handle With Care]

As soon as the Fx 3.0 is splitt off then the development of Fx 4.0 will start as the next trunk.
See: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Global:1.9_Trun ... ranch_Plan

Your link contains the following statement (obviously obsolete): "Ship Firefox 2 no later than Q3 2006 and Firefox 3 no later than Q1 2007" Since Fx 2.0 shipped in October, and October is Q4, obviously, original goal was unreasonable. I assume that Q1 2007 (sometime before April 2007) for Fx 3 is similarly unreasonable.

Can we agree that rushing causes mistakes and sometimes downright serious errors? Silly target dates that then have to disappoint users is the mark of M$, not of a decent outfit that actually considers its users.

[supernova_00]

^Well firefox 3 alpha is scheduled for code freeze on november 17th. Immediately after tree is open the reflow branch will open and then all regression fixes have to go in then a alpha 2. April still looks like a good timeframe

[polidobj]

AFAIK The only work that pertains to Firefox 4 that would occur before 1.9 branches would be the just announced Tamarin work. That would likely occur somewhere off of the trunk, maybe on a development branch like the reflow branch. And that work would land on the trunk after the 1.9 branch is made.

They set dates as goals. Without goal dates then releases can slip into infinity. If a slip in those dates is needed then the release slips. 2.0 sure slipped enough. It wouldn't surprise me for 3.0 to slip to something like August.

[JAB Creations]

Thanks for the info, I'm not worried about release dates. Speaking of which does everyone remember how Firefox 1.1 came out three months after 1.0?

Here is a progression of my question: will Firefox 4 be based on Gecko 1.9, 2.0, or is it too early to determine that?

[The Ex Omega]

Here is a progression of my question: will Firefox 4 be based on Gecko 1.9, 2.0, or is it too early to determine that?

Firefox 4 will be based on the Mozilla 2.0 platform: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/ ... lla_2.html

Direct Quote:
"the goals for Mozilla 2 are:

* Clean up our APIs to be fewer, better, and "on the outside."
* Simplify the Mozilla codebase to make it smaller, faster, and easier to approach and maintain.
* Take advantage of standard language features and fast paths instead of XPCOM and ad hoc code.
* Optimization including JIT compilation for JS2 with very fast DOM access and low memory costs.
* Tool-time and runtime enforcement of important safety properties. "


Which means basically, Firefox will go through another metamorphosis.

[rodness]

My understanding is that Fx3 will be Gecko 1.9, Fx4 will be Gecko 2.0.

[BenBasson]

Oh ho ho... if cleaning up the APIs is an official goal, I can't wait to head over to Bugzilla and begin the slaughter. confirmEx is totally on my hitlist. Then there's the whole completely unreusable browser chrome code, which is almost totally useless to extension authors (since it replaces object oriented design with a bunch of effectively static voids in JavaScript) and leads to lots of duplication.

[trolly]

Firefox 4 will be based on the Mozilla 2.0 platform: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/ ... lla_2.html

This means the new JS engine is going into FF4?

[BenBasson]

Yes.

[trolly]

Finally a faster JS experience.

[Bazzi]

Will Firefox 4 really be off Gecko 2.0 and not like 2 of a 1.9.1-ish branch? Or will there be a Firefox 3.5 or similar? hopefully time will tell soon.

Because if they plan to clean up *all* the mess it will be a HUGE change.

[BenBasson]

It's not like the implementation of Places/Cairo was a small change and that'll be in 3.0. I can't see why very distant changes will pose a significant problem for 4.0.