Sylvestre Ledru, Engineering Director at Mozilla, announced the shift to a two-week release cycle for Firefox. Starting in September, new releases will be formed every two weeks instead of every four weeks. This change is already reflected in the release schedule: the last version on the four-week development cycle will be Firefox 154, scheduled for August 18. Then, in two weeks on September 1, Firefox 155 will be released, followed by Firefox 156 on September 15 and Firefox 157 on September 29.
The reduction of the release cycle is presented as an experiment aimed at delivering new features to users more frequently, ensuring a more predictable release process, and reducing the burden on developers before releases. Development can afford to be more lenient with bringing unfinished features to readiness and take as much time as needed to complete work without creating deadlines. The effectiveness of the shortened development cycle will be closely monitored and adjusted if necessary.
In March, Google announced the transition to a two-week development cycle for Chrome, while not changing the publication cycles for Extended Stable (every 8 weeks), Dev (1-2 times a week), and Canary (daily). The shortened Chrome development cycle will take effect on September 8, following the old schedule for releasing Chrome 153. The goal of shortening the Chrome development cycle is to publish new features, bug fixes, and optimizations more quickly. It is expected that more frequent releases will not affect quality, reduce the risk of failures during updates, and simplify debugging since each release will offer fewer changes.
Source: opennet.ru
