too many versions of tor browser bundle
We seem to be developing a TBB based on Firefox 3.6 and one based on Firefox 6.x. Given our limited resources, we should only develop one branch based on whichever version of Firefox we believe is safest with the current release of torbutton.
Everyone seems confused we have too many versions of TBB.
Activity
I was hoping to close out at least the major tickets from https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/milestone/TorBrowserBundle%202.2.x-stable first..
However, I guess you're right.. all of those are still issues with the FF 3.6 TBBs. None of them are new to FF6.
Should we just declare the next TBB 2.2.x as "stable" and just fix those tickets in subsequent point releases?
Trac:
Cc: N/A to erinn-
I guess the thing I want to avoid is releasing a major release without these changes, and then having people tell me "Uh, dude, we already released 2.2.x as stable. You can't change that stuff now. You must wait 3 years for 2.3.x".
If that is going to be the response to those changes, we must continue to hold 2.2.x as an "alpha". However, if everyone OK with all of those changes going into point releases (note that some of them may change browser behavior and possibly confuse users), then let's release now.
Tor 0.2.3.x will become stable in early 2012. Nick has a timeline, and we're sticking to it.
That said, I think we're going to have to embrace a moving Firefox target throughout the Tor 0.2.2 bundle lifetime. So I'd vote for putting the thing that we think works and is recent in the hands of users, and calling it the stable bundle, and having short-term testing bundles newer than that but not a whole other branch that's trying to stabilize.
We can still add new software and make changes to the TBB 2.2.x branch, so any changes you make to Torbutton can go with that, IMO. I agree that we have too many TBBs, and at this point pretty much everything in them is very stable, but I don't think -- especially with the Windows users -- that we should give them a brand new everything tomorrow. So here is my transition proposal:
- Release new stable TBBs with FF 3.6.x, Vidalia 0.2.14, and Tor 0.2.2.23
- Release new experimental TBBs with FF6, Vidalia 0.2.14, Tor 0.2.2.23, and Torbutton 1.4.1
- Tell tor-talk, the blog, twitter, every damn body, that the 3.6.x bundles are the last of this kind and that they need to test the FF6 bundles NOW
- If any of the following are updated prior to the end of 2 weeks (September 10th? Maybe even earlier? Input welcome!), we release the new stable bundles then. If not, we release September 10th.
Thoughts?
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Replying to erinn:
Thoughts?
Sounds like a fine plan to me. That way if there turns out to be a massive problem with ff6 bundles, we at least have the other ones already lying around as hot spares.