Firefox Release Notes Nomination
This page explains how to nominate release notes for Firefox.
Please see Firefox Release Note Process for additional information.
For questions on the process please reach out on #release-notes internal Slack channel.
Contents
How to decide whether a change should be included in release notes?
If you think your feature should be added to release notes, it's a good idea to nominate it for addition as soon as it is on the nightly channel.
If your feature is ready for testing on the nightly channel but is behind a feature flag and it isn't planned to ship on Beta/Release soon, please nominate it so that we can expose it to our nightly testers. The r+ flag will be set by release management only when it ships to beta/release.
The changes that should be included in release notes include:
- New features for end users and web developers
- Important changes for end users and web developers
- Important stability and security fixes
- Important system requirements changes (ex: end of support for an OS version)
- New locales
How to nominate a bug for release notes addition?
Nomination in Bugzilla
- Nominate a bug. Go to a bug in Bugzilla, and nominate fixes or changes for release notes. Expand the "Tracking Flags" section. Then set the relnote-firefox: flag to "?".
- Release management checks this flag regularly.
- Explain the fix. A form will pop up in the Bugzilla comments box, asking for your suggested wording for the note and an optional URL to link to further documentation.
- If your fix or another project should be in release notes, tell us what it did, what it means, and what the users and tech press should know. Details are very useful here.
- If your fix is only enabled in Nightly, please mention this as well.
A short video showing the above process.
Note: Most of the changes impacting web developers (tooling, web standard support, and new technologies) are documented on MDN which has specific pages for releases aimed at developers.
- The MDN team tracks these bugs with the dev-doc-needed keyword. Please also add the dev-doc-needed keyword when the change is facing web developers.
- If a new feature is implemented behind a flag then also include the flag name, this informs the MDN team to indicate the feature is an Experimental Feature in Firefox.
The relnote-firefox tracking flag values:
| --- | This bug has not been nominated for inclusion in Firefox release notes |
| ? | This bug has been nominated for inclusion in Firefox release notes. Please fill out the template so as to help Release Management with formulating the actual release note content. |
| X+ | Release Management have determined this bug will be included in Firefox X release notes. |
| nightly+ | Release Management have determined this bug will be included in Firefox X Nightly release notes for 3 cycles or until the feature is enabled by default (whichever comes first). |
Nomination in Release Notes Draft Template
For each release, Release Management prepares a document to draft the final release notes. This document includes the relevant Nightly/Beta release notes added during the release cycle. A link to the document is shared on #release-notes internal Slack channel and release-notes internal mail group. Release management also shares the deadline for release note submissions.
You can add release notes directly to the document in the appropriate section. If any release notes need rewording in the document, you can edit them directly in the document.
