Hi, I completely agree with you and Ben (Francis) about the need to provide better updates to our users.
For Gecko and platform in general, it seems hard to provide updates. We don't know how vendors adapt our source code to their hardware, and even if we did, we probably wouldn't have the resources to test these updates. For Gaia, can't we simply treat pre-installed Apps differently? If an installed App already has special permissions, can't these permissions be kept between updates? It might also make sense to develop Gaia apps independently from the core user interface (but still sync their release schedules). That should make updating FFOS releases with compatible WebAPIs easier. Best regards Thomas On 15.04.2014 07:58, Fabrice Desré wrote: > Hi all, > > The situation with updates on b2g is far from being ideal. On one side, > phone manufacturers have little incentive to ship updates for a long > time. On the other side, users legitimately expect to be able to get the > latest version of the OS for as long as their phone works. I think a > reasonable target is to support devices for 2 years. > > Since there's no hope that we will get partners to provide updates for > so long, I've been thinking about what we could do to help users. > > One piece is to provide an *easy* way to change the update channel. > Fortunately that's actually simple: we can just use a web activity that > will be provided by the settings or system app, and then do the usual > setting -> gecko pref mapping. That would let any 3rd party or mozilla > provide gecko+gaia updates without any legal issues. > > Where things get a bit more complex is when oems use their own update > mechanism, removing gecko's standard one. Currently in this case we > can't even switch users to another update channel. To fix that, we'll > need to provide a proper webapi for updates management instead of our > current mess, with pluggable implementations and the ability to switch > back to the default one. > > If we get these 2 parts done, I believe that will move us to a much > better position, where we would be able to confidently recommend devices > to users as upgradable. And I'm sure communities will provide > cyanogenmod-like updates too. > > Another annoyance is that we still can't update gaia apps without doing > a full update. That's pretty ridiculous to not be able to upgrade > productivity and media apps for instance. That is blocked on some APIs > being only available to certified apps. If we look at the calendar app, > only the "settings-read" permission is blocking it from being privileged > though. I may be wrong, but I'm less confident in a short term solution > here. > > I really want to get the update channel and web api parts happen for b2g > 2.0. Volunteers welcome! > > Fabrice > _______________________________________________ dev-b2g mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-b2g
