The roads I take...

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 12/2012 (March 19 - 25, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Got the Stability Dashboard up and running at arewestableyet.com!
  Based on its data and some investigation together with Naoki found that Fennec 12.0b1 had the wrong channel set (actually filed a dupe to that one, which was already known and fixed).
  Did some updates to custom reports reports wrt recent version changes.
  Triaged all Socorro skiplist bugs, either asking questions to make them actionable or forwarding them to Laura for being fixed.
  Updated categorized Socorro bug lists, seeing that some of them have shrunk, actually.
  Discussed discrepancies between a DB query and official crash rates.
  As every week, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed.
• Themes:
  After some more work, I'm almost done with 2.8 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek, and even did take a peek at what I need to work on for the 2.9 versions.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  SecureMail activation, H.264 and Mozilla, permission/security model proposals for B2G, L10n/L20n for B2G, ARMv6 work, WebAPIs, WebRTC, etc.

A lot of time this week went into discussions, be it around skiplists, Socorro features like ElasticSearch and other crash-related topics or around security, B2G and web standards and more general Mozilla topics. A ton of things are going on at Mozilla these days and it's really fun to work in such a dynamic place - even more as our arguments are not about what makes more profit but what's right for the web public and how to move the open web forward. I'm still left in awe about such a place existing for real and can't wait to see some of things come to life that we are talking about right now in this project. There's a lot left to do but I'm convinced that we can do it and make the web a better place for everyone.

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 11/2012 (March 12 - 18, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Improved readability of the Stability Dashboard.
  Updated versions reported on the dashboard and my custom reports to take into account the Firefox source uplifts / releases done this week.
  Fixed a long-going detection bug of "Firefox 4+" in my custom Flash reports.
  Discussed about and then filed a bug on Camino's way forward with Socorro.
  Reviewed some Socorro design/implementation work, e.g. on indicating startup crashes or url lists.
  Discussed formulae for explosiveness detection, will need to convert mine to something the team can work with.
  Investigated a spiking topcrash, finding out it's probably related to downloads in some way.
  Discussed remaining priorities for Q1 with the Socorro team and created a first draft of a Q2 priorities list.
  As every week, watched new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed.
• SeaMonkey:
  Landed the fix to my fix for the Data Manager test failure in time for the aurora merge, and landed a merged patch on beta.
  Reviewed Neil's patch for Data Manager content blocker permissions and found it to almost be there.
  Discussed Neil's patch for finalizing the Download Manager query and determined that the add-on needs an equivalent.
• German L10n:
  Posted a call for help on German product L10n, discussed with the current community and possible volunteers about it and posted again about useful resources for those future German localizers.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Planet Mozilla / Code of Conduct, SecureEmail, H.264 and Mozilla, permission/security model proposals for B2G, proposed download manager API changes, ARMv6 work, pwn2own and the Firefox release, new module requests, etc.

I spent a lot of time in the last few days getting my new HP laptop set up, and am pretty satisfied so far, esp. when it comes to running Linux on it, but I had a couple of WTFs with Windows. First, this machine has a 128 GB SSD as its only internal disk, and in the default setup it came with, Windows 7 took slightly over 40 of those, 20 more taken by a recovery and a HP tools partition, so roughly half of the drive space was not available for use in that default configuration! I couldn't find good clues on how I could shrink down the existing Windows installation (all the tools and software installed were not really that big after all), and given that HP had sent a 32bit and a 64bit Windows system DVD with the package, I wiped the SSD completely and did set up (openSUSE) Linux first, which worked like a charm and could run all the hardware out of the box - and everything is incredibly fast, compared to my previous, roughly 4-year-old machine. When I installed Win7 64bit from the DVD, it again took more space than expected, with somewhat over 20 GB for the system alone and that when it didn't even find drivers for the vast majority of the hardware, including Ethernet and WiFi, (Iron Lake) graphics, or the USB 3 ports. It took me lots of searching, using a USB stick to get network drivers onto the machine, and more searching for stuff like disabling hibernation and page files to get that secondary system to work reasonably and use a somewhat acceptable amount of disk space. While a full-fledged (64-bit) Linux with all kinds of applications takes a bit over 5 GB of space now, I could get Windows 7 Professional 64-bit down to slightly under 20 GB only with a real lot of searching around. Well, at least it works now for the occasional Firefox testing or even playing Age of Empires II (after again searching around how to get its colors fixed, which requires strange workarounds like killing Windows Explorer).
I remember when it was hard to get Linux to work decently and Windows was fine and problem-less (well, it was never small, though), esp. with new hardware it was sometimes hard to get Linux to work decently at all while it was easy to get stuff up on Windows. I must admit that the times have visibly changed. So, when did they say the year of the Linux desktop was coming?

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 10/2012 (March 5 - 11, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Improved the design and added some more verbosity in an info box on the Stability Dashboard.
  Got my correlation version update pulled into Socorro master to land with 2.5.1 right after the Firefox version updates land as well.
  Followed and took part in the Babylon library blocklisting issue, and was glad he could pull back from pushing on it when that company apparently fixed their product and crashes went down.
  Nervously followed and took part of discussions on the ongoing crashes with old graphics drivers until Benoit found a fix and we would be able to ship Firefox 11 with it.
  Was happy to see Socorro ElasticSearch infrastructure move forward.
  Could bring the revert of plugin hang timeout to conclusion.
  Discussed the state of Firefox 11 stability with CrashKill team members (and we saw it was good).
  Discussed the state of Camino on Socorro with their maintainer.
  As usual, continued watching new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed.
• SeaMonkey:
  Found the fix to my fix for the Data Manager test failure, requested review, and banged my head against my desk for the stupidity of the error I made in the first try.
  Continued discussing the data loss with POP3 filters while I stayed on beta build to not encounter it.
  Cheered for SeaMonkey project areas being updated.
  Reacted to a long-standing feedback request on Data Manager content blocker permissions and this turned into a patch I now have to review.
• Web apps:
  Made Lantea Maps look a bit nicer, esp. on phones, and improved performance a bit.
• German L10n:
  Landed the Firefox 11 strings patch by Archeopteryx more or less at the last moment, but we made it!
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Planet Mozilla rules and political views, SecureEmail, third-party add-on installs, 64bit Windows builds, B2G branding, B2G/Gaia UI consistency, permission/security model proposals, battery API, "HTML5" gaming, etc.

Yes, I'm running late again with this update. But it's release week and there's a lot of stuff to do. We just shipped Firefox 11 yesterday even though we first thought we might need to postpone it due to the graphics crashes I mention above, a security vulnerability found in Firefox 10 on Friday (which on Monday we found out had been fixed in 11 since the first beta) and Microsoft patch day (which was yesterday again and has burned us in the past so we are overly careful around it). We could overcome all those obstacles and still ship, though we'll only turn on automated updates tomorrow or so to be able to potentially react if the Microsoft updates don't cooperate well with us (looks good so far, though). Of course, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey also shipped updates - and we lifted our source up the channels and started to develop for Firefox 14 on Nightly. The trains all depart on time, every six weeks - and they are even quite punctual when they pull into the final destinations of releases. It's quite an interesting spectacle, and we seem to get the hang of it after doing it a number of times, and people now get more excited about "landing the patch early in the cycle" (to have a longer on-trunk testing phase) than "still making this train" (and reducing Nightly testing) which makes everyone way more relaxed. The system finally starts to work as it should. Now if we'd only get more people to run Aurora and Beta builds, which get the new features earlier, I'd be really happy (because we'd get better crash statistics and more chance to fix crashes before release, of course)!

Here's a short summary of Mozilla-related work I've done in week 09/2012 (February 27 - March 4, 2012):

• CSI:Mozilla / CrashKill:
  Even more improvements to the Stability Dashboard.
  Watched and tested Socorro 2.4.4 landing, talked to the team about regressions, including an issue that turned out to be a bugzilla problem.
  Watched signatures to see if the recent stackwalking fix was successful, and saw that MSVC8 browser-hang signatures are still broken.
  Investigated data for argumenting to blocklist a Babylon library.
  As a reaction to the Windows 8 preview, filed a bug on listing that OS correctly in signature summaries.
  Pinged people and followed progress on Socorro ElasticSearch infrastructure.
  Tried to drive revert of plugin hang timeout to conclusion.
  Helped investigation of a mobile Java crash by finding a couple of OOIDs for it.
  Gave some feedback on planned UI changes in Socorro, e.g. for report bug for crash.
  Created another update for forced correlation versions so we get the right ones when new Firefox versions come up soon.
  As usual, continued watching new/rising crashes, caring that bugs are filed where needed.
• Firefox cleanup:
  Communicated with devs on the a11y failure of my search bar field cleanup patch, and posted a version of it that applies cleanly to trunk.
• SeaMonkey:
  Got review and landed potential patch for Data Manager test failure. Unfortunately, builds to run the tests on were broken and when they worked again, this wasn't fixed. Need to investigate more.
  Filed a bug on data loss with POP3 filters that I've been seeing recently on trunk. I'm bound to use SeaMonkey 2.8 for the time being, as anything newer has this bug.
• Themes:
  The 2.7 versions of EarlyBlue and LCARStrek got reviews on AMO and are public now, while I started work on the 2.8 versions, which I hope to complete earlier in the cycle than the last ones.
• Various Discussions/Topics:
  Fennec XUL/tablet updates, Mozilla employees and the wider community, SecureMail, password policies, third-party add-on installs, client.py broken with new Mercurial, Mobile World Congress (Open Web Device, Marketplace, et al.), Collusion, Firefox Flicks, 64bit Windows builds, Personas name change, etc.

Last week was pretty intense in terms of messages from Mozilla, with Boot to Gecko and Open Web Device, Mozilla Marketplace, Persona, Collusion, Firefox Flicks, maybe even more being announced and demonstrated. This is still only the beginning of the impact we're planning to make this year and beyond. "The web is the platform" is our central message in what we're doing right now, and we're working hard to make the people accessing the web be really in control of their experience and that their - our - privacy on that web is being respected. As Tron was "fighting for the user", Mozilla is fighting for openness, innovation and opportunity on the web, and that means both making the web an even better platform and basically the platform and ensuring that people are in control of their own privacy and experience on the web.

Look out for more to come in those areas in the next months, support us by using truly open standards and products (including our own) and help us in achieving those goals for the web and everyone connected to it!