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Hi All,<br>
<br>
With the move to the new release model, and as per the plan, we're
still expecting to do new beta releases once per cycle.<br>
<br>
I would like to propose that we move the beta release to the second
week of a gecko rapid release cycle - i.e. although Firefox would
release a new gecko beta around the same time as a new release point
(e.g. 18.0b1 normally comes out a day after 17.0), we'd actually
wait a week before building and releasing Thunderbird 18.0b1.<br>
<br>
This idea has been suggested to me a few times, and I'm now thinking
it would give us some advantages. Here's the list:<br>
<ul>
<li>Any big issues found with Gecko in Firefox's 18.0b1 would
likely be fixed or at least known, before we produce the
Thunderbird 18.0b1</li>
<li>If a Thunderbird release, e.g. 17.0 or any other, requires a
chemspill due to security or stability issues, this may give us
flexibility around producing a beta to test fixes for the
security/stability issues if we needed to use the beta<br>
</li>
<li>Also, wrt chemspills, it would mean that we would not need to
produce both a 17.0 and 18.0b1 on the week of release, and then
17.0.1 and 18.0b2 the following week (we'd just do 17.0, 17.0.1
and 18.0b2)</li>
<li>There would be one less release to track and manage during
release week<br>
</li>
<li>It gives L10n another week for any sign-offs to get their work
into beta (it'll be continuously integrated anyway, but we do
see some sign-offs in the first week or so after a merge day)</li>
</ul>
<p>For Gecko 24, we'd probably move the first beta to the first week
again (as it will form the release), which will mean a slightly
shortened Gecko 23 test cycle. However, I don't see a big issue in
doing that.<br>
</p>
<p>Note that the repository merges would still happen on the same
day as they do now, i.e. in sync with mozilla-*.<br>
</p>
<p>If there's no objections to it, then we'll do betas in the second
week going forward.<br>
</p>
<p>Mark.<br>
</p>
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