Go Faster

Go Faster is a plan to change the way we ship Firefox for Desktop, and potentially other products. The end goal is to reduce the time it takes to deliver value to the user. This focuses on getting features and fixes to the user on a reduced cycle time, but includes reductions in time to download updates and new versions, and reductions in build and release time.

Meetings & Communications

Meetings

Development

Schedule

Firefox main release schedule is the master location for the dates when each Firefox version goes to Aurora, Beta, & Release.

Firefox 41 Release

Iteration 41.2: Tuesday May 26 - Monday June 8
Iteration 41.3: Tuesday June 9 - Monday June 29
- Note: IT 41.3 is a 3-week iteration.

Firefox 42 Release

Iteration 42.1: Tuesday June 30 - Monday July 13
Iteration 42.2: Tuesday July 14 - Monday July 27
Iteration 42.3: Tuesday July 28 - Monday August 10

Themes

As we plan what's coming next, we're focused on the themes outlined here. This is not a commitment to the next projects - just our scratch area, but it is in order of relative priority.

Ship features with service integrations as Add-ons: Decouple feature development of service integration features from 6 week Firefox software release train
Ship Localizations Separately From Product: Have the installer or updater pull a langpack from AMO during the install or update process, and decouple langpack builds from our releases.
Ship data separately from code: Pull data out and make it a separate download (transparent to the user) via the installer or updater.

Project 1: Ship features as system add-ons

Component: Addons manager in Firefox

Owner: Addons team (TBD) Tasks:

   * Make Firefox understand what a system add-on is
   * How to install one 
   * How it should be signed
   * Where it should be updated from
   * That it can't be uninstalled, only disabled
   * That it should be available across all profiles
   * Work with add-on updater team to figure out where to install these from.

Component: Updater in Firefox

Owner: TBD
Tasks:

   * Change the updater:
   * Update system add-ons
   * Check compatibility/dependencies
   * Check signed appropriately
   * Update data files
   * Separate the updater from the Firefox binary

Component: Services system add-on updater

Owner: ? - Potentially Les Orchard or Selena Deckelmann
Tasks:

   * Figure out if we want to serve system addons from AMO, from Balrog, or from somewhere else
   * Build that.

Component: Build, release, QA pipeline

Team: Selena Deckelmann and Morgan Phillips for releng, Krupa Raj and Matt Brandt from WebQA, JP Schneider from tools
Tasks:

   * Design a build and release pipeline for system add-ons (using existing tools) (Selena)
   * Decide/design the role of QA in CD for Firefox (QA teams)

Component: l10n for systems addons

Team: (TBD), Michael Kelly
Tasks:

   * Design and build a process for localizing system add-ons

Component: Hello as add-on

Owner: Adam Roach (WebRTC) + Mark Banner (Client Hello team)
Tasks:

   * Implement Hello as a system add-on
   * Create a migration path from Hello in product to Hello as system add-on

Dependencies:

   * Updater changes, build pipeline?

Project 1a: Ship experiment features as add-ons from IdeaLab

Component: Universal Search as IdeaLab add-on

Owner: Jared Hirsch/Nick Chapman
Tasks:

   * Implement Universal Search as an experimental add-on (this can be served/updated from AMO or similar) (Jared/Les)
   * Implement first iteration of Firefox IdeaLab website (Nick Chapman/John Gruen)
   * Design and implement process for IdeaLab experiments

Dependencies:

   * None.

Project 2: Pull data out of products and serve and update it separately

Q3
Tech lead/architect: Tarek Ziade

Component: Services data updater

Owner: French team (Tarek)
Tasks:

   * Serve updates to security policy
   * Serve datafiles for Fennec (dictionaries and fonts)

Dependencies:

   * Client updater changes (in project 1, above)

Project 3: decouple l10n from product

Probably Q4

Component: Build process

Owner: Chris AtLee / RelEng / RelMan
Tasks:

   * Remove l10n repacks from the release critical path
   * Work out how to add additional strings to locale packs
   * Automate uploading locale packs to AMO

Dependencies:

   * Installer/updater changes

Component: Installer/updater

Owner: Rob Strong or Add-ons team
Tasks:

   * Build stub installers for Windows and Linux
   * Change installer to pull locale pack from AMO as a separate download
   * Figure out how locale updates need to work

Project Introduction

Team Mailing list: if applicable
Team IRC Channel: where does this team "hang-out"
Summary of our plans for this year
- links back to main Firefox page - Marco to create a section on main page for team summaries.
- Quick high-level plans for the year for Desktop management and contributors.
  - Here's an example of the overview from Platform team for webRTC
Dependencies: feature, partner, resource, etc. that impact this projects ability to succeed - put links to other project pages.

Links to Current info

The Links wiki page is the central location for current focus, Roadmap, Metrics, UX, Marketing, tech-architecture, and more.

Roles and Responsibilities

The Contacts Page has the Roles and Responsibilities for Firefox teams, partner teams, and external partners.

Firefox/Go Faster

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