WeeklyUpdates/2007-07-16

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Meeting Details

• 1:00pm Pacific time (20:00 UTC until November 4, 2007)
• Mozilla HQ, 1st floor conference table
• +1 650 903 0800 x91 Conf# 8600 (US/International)
• +1 416 848 3114 x91 Conf# 8600 (Canada)
• +1 800 707 2533 (pin 369) Conf# 8600 (US Toll Free)
• join irc.mozilla.org #staffmeeting for attendance taking and backchannel

note: all participants are muted automatically; if you want to talk, press *1 to un-mute yourself

Development Updates

Fx/TB 1.5.0.13/2.0.0.5

• Due a critical security bug (cross browser scripting) Fx/Tb2005 has become a firedrill release.
• A regression was found in Fx2005rc1 builds which caused a respin.
• Fx2005rc2 testing is in progress. We will have updates ready to test this evening.
• At this point the tentative release date is next Thursday (7/19), but we might be able to accelerate the release, as Fx2005 buils are ready/tested. This is to be discussed.
• Tb2005 will either be released at the same time or shortly after Fx.

TB 3

• No Announcements this week. Work continues on leak fixes, frozen linkage and hunspell integration.

Gecko 1.9

• Christian Biesinger in Mountain View
• Mac team is in town this week

Firefox 3

• Places team focused on UI (details)
• Download manager spec complete
• Ongoing design discussions in d-a-f
• AddOns specs in progress, Madhava and Rob Strong leading that work
• More plans to be posted this week about visual refresh
• M7 freeze next week, m8 is feature frozen (Sept 5th freeze)

IT

• Build vmware migrations
• Breakpad support
• Supporting performance push and graph server enhancments

Build

• VMware Migrations are completed. We're still addressing performance issues, though (tracked in bug 386074). At this time, we don't think we'll have to take any substiantial downtime again, though.
• Related to that, we're aware that trunk cycle times need some work. We're discussing now how to best address this. Sub-30 minute cycle times is a requirement, and we're shooting for sub-20 minute cycles.
• The new Linux reference platform (fxnewref-linux-tbox) became the official Linux nightly build machine last week. This machine is based on the Linux/Runtime_Requirements. Thus far, we've not had any feedback regarding problems. Bug 387167 tracks renaming this Tinderbox after its shakedown cruise is finished.
• We're working on refreshing the Win32 reference platform as well. This is tracked in Bug 384624. Please comment there if you want any additional tools added to the refresh list. We're planning on switching Win32 nightlies later this week or early next week, depending on how testing goes.
• The Build Team will be doing our bi-monthly bug triage tomorrow, 17 July.

QA

Test Execution

• Firefox 2.0.0.5- Bug fix verification, smoke testing, BFT'ing, locale testing, urgent testing over the weekend. See Test Plan. [juan, tomcat, abillings, marcia, tracy, others]
• Firefox 3
  • Daily smoke testing [many]. Bug verification for Places [abillings]. Test planning, and development, and testing in many areas.
  • Recruited two Window-eyes beta testers as Minefield/WE quick reaction testers [tkeenan]

Test Development

• JavaScript: Improved regression and fix detection for the JavaScript tests. Added new tests and filed a regression that was detected by the scripts! [bc]
• Firefox 3
  • First draft of the Mac OS Test Plan was sent out for review [marcia, stephend]
  • Added test cases for web compatibility [tchung]

Tools and Infrastructure

• Talos Performance framework:
  • created script to format manifests for baseline testing. Got that working for trunk, reporting to mozilla test [alice, robcee]
  • Completed initial version of port to Mac OS (awaiting review) [zach]
  • Worked out a steps to get us to a modularized framework enabling simple integration of new tests into Talos [alice]
  • Designed a generalized result reporting framework that can be used by many different tests in an effort to simplify the Talos backend. [zach]

• landed new browser chrome harness + suite [robcee]
  • Bug 387415 and dependants

• QA test extension: Got test result submission working. Worked on notification system backend. Ben Hsieh is ramping up to help with this. [zach, ben_h]

• Graph server [alice]
  • Re-submitted dump-to-csv graph server patch with minor fixes.
  • Created graph server test tool which injects collect.cgi and bulk.cgi with data

• QA Assurance Environments: Generated and reviewed several profiles (use the same user, password as for this status report) for 1.8.1, 1.9.0 on Windows XP, Linux, Mac PPC after spidering the top 33 sites. Note the "bookmarks" profiles added each visited page to the bookmarks. Investigated location of cache and history data in trunk builds (sqllite) in order to help with profile creation for trunk builds. [bc, marcia]

• Litmus: discovered that mod_perl was turned off (presumably this occurred by accident during the last Litmus server move). Did some work to support mod_perl 2.0 and re-enabled it, resulting in a performance improvement of approximately 600% for loading index.cgi! [zach]

Misc

• Finalized Q3 Goals [timr]
• Gained access to the Jaws 9 private beta list [tkeenan]

Marketing/PR

- Support knowledge base article tracking list is live. Need your help creating content starting this Thursday!
- Retention plan overview and feedback session this Thursday at 3pm.
- OSCON:

• Please help get the word out for office hours and our community party
• 4 passes available for Tuesday's Radar Briefing
• See SpreadFirefox for complete lineup of activities

Community

• Finalized top-level goals for Q3. Will share shortly. Major focus on more consistent reporting.
• Air Mozilla went great. About 150 video viewers and scores of questions coming from IRC, Email, and IM.
  • Air Mozilla on demand (podcasts) to be posted in multiple formats this week.
  • Interviews on Air Mozilla to become a regular feature (starting monthly, and hopefully moving to every two weeks.) Collecting suggestions for next guest. Email Asa.
• Community Connections (name subject to change) tool requirements being developed. Tool to provide what owners.html does for code for the broader Mozilla project.

Developer Relations

• John Resig (jresig)
  • Built a JavaScript speed test suite to analyze Spidermonkey, Tamarin, and Rhino.
  • Released a browser/DOM environment for Rhino.
• Mark Finkle (mfinkle)
  • Added some code to xulexplorer for building XR apps
  • Added tutorial/sample to MDC on making autocomplete datasources
  • Release 0.5 of webrunner
  • Post on "contenteditable" feature of Fx3
• Cesar
  • Working on XPCOM objects to create and read mozilla archieve (MAR) files.

Webdev, Add-ons, AMO

• Kubla
  • Alex has been making great progress here: workflow is setup, language handling is setup
• AMO
  • Progress on mocks, had a good meeting last week about finalizing search/display/browse pages.
  • Download count script is behind but we made progress last week. Looking to avoid dupes and get better stats for users.
• Breakpad
  • Worked on bugzilla integration, among other things
• Mozilla Support
  • Working with TikiWiki community on support-stage setup

Foundation Updates

Note that Frank is on vacation and won't be participating in the weekly call.

• Grants and related activities
  • Frank completed paperwork for one more project left over from the Summer of Code applications, a project by Jörg Dotzki to create a Firefox extension to simulate the appearance of web pages to colorblind individuals.
  • Frank published a blog post on a proposed accessibility vision and strategy for the Mozilla Foundation.

• IP/legal issues
  • Frank formally submitted the application for US trademark registration of the Camino logo.

• Other
  • Zak has been working to help get the Internet as a Public Good symposium organized.
  • David has been working on various tasks related to donations to the Mozilla Foundation.
  • Gerv was on holiday last week.

For more information see the individual status reports from David, Frank, Gerv, and Zak.