[tor-dev] How to best support tor 0.2.3.x in Tor Browser Bundle?

[Mike Perry]

Quick recap from #tor-dev IRC convo with Nick, Roger, and Andrew:

We need to get a usable tor 0.2.3.x-rc bundle out RSN so we can declare
it "stable", but there are concerns that using Firefox 14 with this will
continue to cause unexpected problems and otherwise scare people away
from testing tor 0.2.3.x enough.

However, I still need to have a place to commit TBB-alpha patches, and
have three bugfixes (including a fix for a FF14 crash bug that was
discovered by tor-qa) that I'd like to get into the alpha series. Also,
if we don't provide Firefox Rapid Release with regular alpha testing,
we're going to be really, really sad when everything breaks at once in
November with the next Firefox ESR.

One option is to create a temporary "rc" branch of torbrowser.git's
maint-2.2 to build tor 0.2.3.x but with the rest of a "TBB stable"
bundle with Vidalia 0.2.x and Firefox 10.x ESR, and leave maint-2.3 as
"TBB alpha".

A second option is to create a more permanent "TBB beta" series, with
whatever software smells like it is getting close to stable at a given
point in time.

A third option is to just keep doing English-only maint-2.3 builds
back-to-back until tor-qa stops reporting crash bugs or strange issues.

However, we need input from Erinn to decide the best approach. If the
"rc" fork (or a permanent beta branch) messes up the build process or
introduces issues with build automation work, perhaps it is not the
right way to go, and we should just keep doing english-only maint-2.3
releases back-to-back until FF14 is more stable (Note: it works OK for
me now in my test builds with the crash fix applied).

So Erinn, which one is least painful for you?

Also, does anyone else have any other input or suggestions on how to
approach this problem? We're probably going to run into this issue
periodically due to our different components stabilizing at different
points...


-- 
Mike Perry
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