Appists!
It's been a while since I last updated y'all about the status of the
r2d2b2g project building Firefox OS Simulator. Here's the latest!
*Development Lull*
Simulator development took a back seat to other work (and some PTO) over
the last month, so there hasn't been much progress lately. But I
recently landed newer versions of B2G and Gaia, from January 18, that
include all the fixes from Firefox OS's January 15 major development
milestone along with a few days of post-milestone fixes for major issues.
*Better App Installation*
And Luca Greco landed a significant rewrite of the code that installs
apps into the Simulator. Two key benefits of the new implementation: it
registers permissions with B2G's permissions manager, so privileged apps
get the permissions they request; and it installs apps without
restarting the Simulator, which makes installation faster and less
disruptive.
*Version 2.0pre5*
Last Friday I released the fifth preview of the next version of the
Simulator. It includes the newer versions of B2G/Gaia, Luca's changes,
and all the other fixes that have landed since Simulator 1.0 shipped
last month. Unless we discover significant issues that would prevent us
from releasing it, we'll ship this preview as the next stable release,
Simulator 2.0, in the very near future!
So give it a spin (Windows
<https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/labs/r2d2b2g/r2d2b2g-windows.xpi>,
Mac
<https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/labs/r2d2b2g/r2d2b2g-mac.xpi>,
and Linux
<https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/labs/r2d2b2g/r2d2b2g-linux.xpi>),
and let us know how it works for you!
*Version Numbers*
Earlier preview builds were versioned 1.1preX, but the latest one is
2.0pre5. What gives?
We plan to ship Simulator on a regular, frequent schedule, just like
Firefox. And on such a schedule, version updates that sometimes
increment the major number (i.e. the "1" in "1.0") and other times the
minor one (the "0") are confusing, since they are too oblique a
reference to the significance of the changes between the various versions.
So we're adopting the Firefox policy of incrementing the major number
with each stable release; except for urgent hotfix updates, for which
we'll increment the minor one.
Thus the next stable release will be 2.0, and the one after that will be
3.0. The exact schedule of releases is yet-to-be-determined, but it'll
look a lot like Firefox's!
*Versions vs. Milestones*
Shipping regularly means not holding releases for features that aren't
yet ready. But it's still useful to think about sets of features that
represent a coherent, marketable improvement in usefulness and usability.
So Bill Maggs is working on a PRD that describes a sequence of
milestones for the Simulator to progressively meet more user needs. Each
of which will take more than one version to achieve (exactly how many
depends on the number of engineers working on the project, of course).
Thus, when you hear a Simulator number being bandied about (or bandy it
about yourself), make sure you know whether it's a version or a milestone!
*Meetings on Hiatus*
Last year we held weekly Simulator status meetings on Wednesdays, but
we've decided to delay reinstating them this year until we have a team
large enough to justify the temporal disruption.
Still want to stay apprised of all the goings-on? You can do so by
reading these updates in dev-webapps
<http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#dev-webapps>, following code
commits <https://github.com/mozilla/r2d2b2g/commits/master> and issues
<https://github.com/mozilla/r2d2b2g/issues> on GitHub, and chatting with
us on #openwebapps
<http://chat.mibbit.com/?channel=%23openwebapps&server=irc.mozilla.org>!
-myk
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