Firefox Summit Takeaway
Posted 3 years, 8 months ago at 00:52. 0 comments
Lots of discussion and decision-making last week, only some of which was fueled by well-deserved booze. Here’s a wrap-up of the salient points as they pertain to me.
Build/Release:
- There are lots of releases planned prior to Christmas, although nothing quite as whiz-bang as Firefox 2. I’ll be helping out wherever I can with the various RCs, alphas, and partner builds, even if it’s just to continue handling the daily flood of tinderbox requests so that others don’t have to.
- Continued work to get our Mac tinderbox “ref” platform implemented across all our current tinderboxen, along with integrating the new Intel xserves into the mix when they arrive. Man, I really wish Apple were making this easier for me, but software updates, in conjunction with having multiple Apple build IDs for the same software version, are really biting my ass right now.
QA:
- davel is leaving Mozilla soon and we wish him well. Much of the unit testing work that he was championing will be taken over by robcee. Again, I’ll be helping out where I can, likely wherever interaction with the build team is required. I already have one foot in each camp anyway.
Litmus:
- There was much talk at the summit about where (specifically, on which products) Mozilla should be focusing its energies. Nothing is set in stone yet, but things will be changing. As our product focus changes, we need to be able to uplift community members to continue testing products that we cannot supply adequate QA resources for. This means implementing product-based admin privileges in Litmus, which was on file but not a priority before.
- Zach and I will be improving the new Litmus install story over the next few months to make it as easy as possible for a 3rd party to install Litmus and use it for their own needs. The aim here is to encourage more people to adopt Litmus as a tool and ease our burden of development. There are lots of other build, release, and QA tools that need writing, so I’d love to get Litmus into maintenance mode ASAP.
- Now that I’ve had my ideas for the test runs interface vetted by the QA team, I can plow ahead and get them done. Hooray for in-person whiteboarding!
