Sylvestre Ledru, Director of Engineering at Mozilla, announced the transition to a two-week release cycle for Firefox. Starting in September, new releases will be released every two weeks instead of every four weeks. The change is already reflected in the release schedule: Firefox 154, scheduled for August 18, will be the last release with a four-week cycle. Two weeks later, on September 1, Firefox 155 will be released, followed by Firefox 156 on September 15, and Firefox 157 on September 29.
The shortened release cycle is being presented as an experiment aimed at delivering new features to users more frequently, ensuring a more predictable release process, and reducing the workload on developers before releases. Development will be more lenient in bringing unfinished features to completion, allowing for the necessary time to be spent on the work, without creating deadlines. The effectiveness of the shortened development cycle will be closely monitored and adjusted as necessary.
In March, Google announced a transition to a biweekly Chrome development cycle, while maintaining the same release cycles for Extended Stable (every eight weeks), Dev (1-2 times a week), and Canary (daily). The shortened Chrome development cycle will begin on September 8, after Chrome 153 resumes its old release schedule. The goal of shortening the Chrome development cycle is said to be to release new features, bug fixes, and optimizations more quickly. It is hoped that more frequent releases will not impact quality, will reduce the risk of update failures, and will simplify debugging, as each release will introduce fewer changes.
Source: opennet.ru
