Hi everyone,
(tldr; read the last paragraph)
In October [0] we were very excited about the prospect of all Tor Browser platforms following the Firefox Rapid Release schedule. However, in April (now), Android is still the only platform following the rapid release train and Windows, macOS and Linux remain on the extended support release (ESR).
As we move closer to the next ESR transition, this year it is beginning at Firefox 91 in May [1], I am wondering whether we should reverse course and slow down. At this point, we cannot safely transition all platforms onto the rapid release train before October (when 78esr reaches its EOL), so the only option is moving all desktop platforms onto FF91esr and then evaluate migrating onto the rapid release train after that.
Unfortunately, we are still a very small team, and the current situation is already pushing our team to its limits. Yesterday I spoke with Georg about another subject, and he briefly mentioned the idea of keeping the desktop platforms on ESR instead of moving onto the rapid releases. This alone wouldn't make much difference, and I previously discarded this idea, because we're already fighting all of the code churn for Android (although some of the code, like the automatic updater, is not used on Android). The important piece of this plan is reducing Fenix's burden, too.
My current thought is that we move desktop platforms from 78esr to 91esr, and we begin rebasing our Fenix branches (and dependencies) only every 2-3 months. The only exception is geckoview where we continue rebasing our geckoview branches on the existing schedule. In addition, we drop desktop patches from the geckoview branches, and Android patches from the ESR branches. We could've (and should've) done the latter simplification earlier, but the former change makes future ESR transitions a little more complicated. I think we can live with that.
- Matt
[0] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-dev/2020-October/001154.html [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar