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howto: follow firefox 3.1 beta, trunk or final

January 9, 2009 in Firefox, Google Chrome, Mozilla, QMO, howto | 4 comments

Asa points out some incorrect information in an article on Wired about following different branches of development on Chrome.  We’ve been doing this at Mozilla for years and years but I thought it might be worth documenting how to do this for people who want to follow our final releases, beta builds, beta nightlies and trunk nightlies.

Firefox final releases.

These are the builds that show up on the main page on mozilla.com.  The current build is Firefox 3.0.5 and users who previously have downloaded and installed Firefox 3 are automatically updated to builds as we release them.  They are generally done on a 6 week schedule, or as security or bug fixes require.

Firefox 3.1 does not have a final release yet and as such it’s not on this page yet.

Firefox beta builds.

There is a link on mozilla.com to download released betas.  If you’ve downloaded and installed one of these betas you will also be offered betas as we release them.  Once we move from beta to release candidate, you will be offered upgrades to the release candidates and eventually to Firefox 3.1 final when it’s released.

Firefox beta nightly builds.

As of the writing of this entry, Firefox 3.1 development has branched and our beta, release candidate and 3.1 final work is being done on a separate branch.  We generate builds every day for people to test beta functionality.  You can find the built nightlies on our download server in the latest-1.9.1 directory.  (In addition, have a look at our mozilla QA project (QMO) for information about how to get involved!)  If you’re following this set of builds you will get the opportunity to update one or more times a day with new builds.  As of Beta 2, these builds are pretty stable and these are what I’m currently running for all my day to day work.  You can tell these are the beta builds because they are named “Shiretoko.”

Firefox trunk nightly builds.

This is the rawest of the raw (although still not too bad!)  This will eventually become Firefox 3.2 or Firefox 4 or whatever we end up calling it.  Fixes that are set to land in the Firefox 3.1 branch land here first, so it’s a place to test out fixes before they make it to the beta channel.  You can find these builds in our latest-trunk directory.  You will likely see more instability and bugs here.  Updates are done daily, or sometimes more than once a day.  If you’re running these you definitely want to be involved in our QMO effort.  You can tell these are trunk builds since they are named “Minefield.”

Hope this helps – enjoy!

  1. nowraisins’s avatar

    nowraisins on January 20, 2009 at 9:51 am

    You should mention that beta builds will not only update you all the way to 3.1 Final but (unless you reinstall a non-beta version or do some arcane tweaks) will also force you to install beta versions of 3.1.x updates…

    IMHO there should be some kind of checkbox to unsubscribe from beta updates. Very often the situation is that you really want some new features from the newest version, so you’re willing to temporarily put up with instability to access the new features. You’re happy with your brand new beta Firefox, then it updates to the final version and you’re still happy. Three months later, a new minor beta appears and you’re forced to use it because you didn’t think of disabling the beta update channel. But this time, there is no reward for the instability of beta versions: there are no new features that would make your life easier, you just risk losing data without any benefit. Not to mention that when you installed the beta 6 months ago, you were willing to put up with data loss or spend time frequently backing up your profile but nowadays maybe you can’t afford to lose data.

  3. Johannes’s avatar

    Johannes on January 22, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    You can change the type of updates firefox will offer. This can be done by editing the config via about:config (“app.update.channel”) or through one of my favourite extensions “Update Channel Selector”. It allows you to choose between “Release”, “Beta”, “Nightly” and “Default” (whatever “Default” means). So if you think current betas are not worth downloading switch to release and you will get them once all known bugs are fixed.

  4. nowraisins’s avatar

    nowraisins on January 24, 2009 at 9:28 am

    about:config doesn’t work, according to the documentation “This preference can only be changed by editing channel-prefs.js in the application directory.”

    Either way I know it can be worked around, my point is that it’s important to inform less knowledgeable users that installing a beta could cause them to scratch their head six months from now. And experienced testers tend to forget about mentioning it to users because they already have the extension and/or don’t mind using a beta all the time.