Release Management

Quick Links

• Release Calendar
• The Release Process explained
• Current and Past Releases
• Firefox Merge/Release Calendar
• Release Calendar (Details)

About Release Management

The Release Management team keeps the release process on track for upcoming releases. We focus on release quality, security, and stability. As release managers follow specific features and individual bugs, we work with developers, engineering managers, product managers, UI/UX teams, QE, and release engineering, doing whatever it takes to coordinate the many details in the creation of a new version of Firefox. We aim to get features & fixes landed in time for proper evaluation. Our goal is to ship the most stable & excellent product possible for Firefox Desktop & Mobile for our users.

Contribute

There are many ways to help the release management team. Help with tracked bugs, or hack on the tools our team develops and maintains.

Developers and anyone in the community can help by proposing bugs for tracking, using the tracking flags in bugzilla.mozilla.org.

The relman team maintains several tools. You can help by fixing bugs!

• Our automatic nag tool to send email to Firefox developers about their bugs
• ship-it - interface to start builds of Firefox, Firefox for Android and Thunderbird
• Google Play scripts to upload the APK and manage translations

Team info

• Release_Management/Team_members List of release managers, past and present

Communication Channels

E-mail

• Team distribution list: release-mgmt at mozilla dot com

IRC

• #release-drivers - Firefox Desktop and Android release drivers. Good way to contact release managers, ask questions, escalate issues.

Twitter

• @MozillaReleases Release Management team communication channel
• @FirefoxNightly Firefox Nightly communication and feeback channel

Blog

• Release Management Blog

Visio

• Release Coordination Vidyo Link

Slack

• #release-coordination

Meetings

We host and are a part of number of meetings. You can't miss us at channel meetings, where we discuss and try to resolve any release related issues. Anyone working to get a new feature or complicated fix into Firefox may want to join the channel meeting to discuss the process with the entire team of release managers. User advocacy, QE and stability, and release engineering team members also often join the channel meetings.

• Channel Meeting
  • This meeting takes place twice a week on Tuesdays 10am Pacific time (18h UTC) and Thursdays at 8am Pacific time (16h UTC) in the Release Coordination Vidyo Room
  • Channel Meeting Wiki Archive
• Release Post Mortem
  • This meetings happens at the Tuesday Channel Meeting two weeks after a release
  • Postmortem Schedule & Agenda

Calendar Updating

To add the basic release calendar to your Google calendar if you have a mozilla.com email:

• Go to your calendar
• In the upper right, click on the Gear icon and click on Settings in the pop up menu
• In the Settings page, click on Add Calendar in the left menu
• Click on Browse ressources in the sub-menu
• Click on Public in the main pane
• Click on the checkbox next to Public - Firefox Merge/Release Schedule
• You can also add "Public- Releases Scheduling" here for a more detailed view.

Direct calendar link: Firefox Merge/Release Schedule calendar

When the release schedule is adjusted for any reason, we need to ensure that our calendar is updated to reflect this. If the calendar itself is updated, there is a link to it on this page (at the top) as well as on RapidRelease/Calendar

Team Resources

Each version of Firefox is followed by a release manager who owns it from start to release. This way, Nightly, Beta, ESR, and Release channels have someone dedicated to getting all the pieces put together correctly.

• Release_Management/Release_owners
• Nightly Tasks for relman during Nightly
• Beta Release Checklist
  • Excel based checklist: Mid-beta and release checklist
• ESR Triage
• Publishing to Mobile stores
• Release Days Merge and release day processes
• Point releases and chemspills
• Releng release flow for Beta and Release
• GoFaster release and relnote process

Dashboards

• Review important bug fixes landed in Nightly for uplift to Beta, ESR
• Release channel Blockers and Regressions
• Beta channel Blockers and Regressions
• Nightly channel Blockers and Regressions
• Stability dashboard
• Stability deep-dive scripts
• Dashboard the Cat - she likes to eat headphones

Release managers also help with ways we can update aspects of Firefox on the fly, including graphics driver and plugin blocklisting.

• Blocklisting
• System add-ons (also known as Go Faster add-ons)

Here are some guidelines for developers, product managers, and our team as well.

• Uplift rules
• Tracking rules
• Release notes rules

Tools

• Ship-it UI - Mozilla VPN
• Product-Details, a public JSON API about Firefox and Thunderbird releases
• Our Release Survey
• Firefox Triage Dashboard
• Onboarding