Sylvestre Ledru, engineering director at Mozilla, announced a transition to a bi-weekly release cycle for Firefox. Starting in September, new releases will be generated every two weeks instead of every four weeks. This change is already reflected in the release schedule: the last version following the four-week cycle will be Firefox 154, scheduled for August 18. Subsequently, Firefox 155 will be released on September 1, 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 workload on developers before releases. During development, a more lenient approach can be taken towards finalizing unfinished features, allowing work to progress at a realistic pace without imposing deadlines. The effectiveness of the shortened development cycle will be closely monitored and adjusted as necessary.
In March, Google announced a shift to a bi-weekly development cycle for Chrome, while not changing the publication cycle for Extended Stable builds (every 8 weeks), Dev (1-2 times a week), and Canary (daily). The shortened development cycle for Chrome will take effect on September 8, after the release of Chrome 153 on the old schedule. The goal of shortening the Chrome development cycle is to publish new features, bug fixes, and optimizations faster. It is expected that more frequent releases will not affect quality, reduce the risk of issues during updates, and simplify debugging, as each release will include fewer changes.
Bron: opennet.ru
