5 releases at the same time

On Friday, one of the predictions in our “RelEng 2010 story” came true. We’re now doing 5 releases at the same time.

  • FF3.7a3
  • FF3.6.2
  • FF3.5.9
  • FF3.0.19
  • TB2.0.0.24 (work mostly done, but still on our plates until we ship it)

(Fennec 1.0.1 is likely to start this week also, but it wasn’t counted, because we haven’t been given a “go” yet!)

This is a major milestone for us. A couple of years ago, every time RelEng had to work on *one* release, it was a big deal; the idea of doing 5 releases simultaneously was simply not an option.

Don’t get me wrong; doing 5 releases simultaneously will not be trivial. There’s bound to be gotchas and surprises. However, the mere fact that we can now do this at all is really wonderful to see. Being able to do other work at the same time, well… it speaks volumes on how the group has grown, how the infrastructure has scaled, and how all the behind-the-scenes improvements have helped streamline the release process here at Mozilla.

One way or another, this week will be exciting. Wish us luck!

5 thoughts on “5 releases at the same time

  1. Where was 3.6.1? And why are you still maintaining the 3.0 branch? Having 3 branches still releasing updates is just confusing for users.

  2. They already did a Gecko 1.9.2.1 release for mobile and they wanted to keep the Fx and Gecko versions in sync (so Fx 3.6.2 will be running Gecko 1.9.2.2).