Firefox is moving to a shorter release preparation cycle.

Firefox Developers announced on the reduction of the cycle for preparing new browser releases to four weeks (previously, releases were prepared in 6-8 weeks). Firefox 70 will be released according to the old schedule on October 22, followed by the release of Firefox 71 six weeks later on December 3, after which subsequent releases will follow. will be formed every four weeks (January 7, February 11, March 10, etc.).

The Extended Support Release (ESR) branch will, as before, be released once a year and supported for another three months after the formation of the next ESR branch. Security updates for the ESR branch will be synchronized with the regular releases and will also be released every 4 weeks. The next ESR release will be Firefox 78, scheduled for June 2020. Development for SpiderMonkey and Tor Browser will also transition to the 4-week release cycle.

The reason for shortening the development cycle is the desire to deliver new features to users more quickly. It is expected that more frequent releases will enhance the flexibility of product development planning and implementation of priority changes that align with business and market demands. According to the developers, a four-week development cycle allows for an optimal balance between the rapid introduction of new Web APIs and ensuring quality and stability.

The reduction in release preparation time will lead to a decrease in the testing time for beta releases, nightly builds, and Developer Edition releases, which is planned to be compensated for by more frequent updates for testing builds. Instead of preparing two new beta versions per week, it is planned to adapt a frequent update release strategy for the beta branch, previously applied to nightly builds.

To reduce the risk of unforeseen issues when introducing significant new features, related changes will be rolled out to users gradually rather than all at once — initially, the feature will be activated for a small percentage of users and then expanded to full coverage or dynamically disabled if issues are detected. Additionally, to test new features and make decisions about their inclusion in the main release, users will be invited to participate in experiments outside the regular release preparation cycle as part of the Test Pilot program.

Source: opennet.ru