Release Management/Onboarding

Welcome to Release Management.

Here's a list of accounts to set up, tools to check out, and any other details we can think of to help you start getting yourself set up.

Account Permissions

You'll want to make sure you have the necessary permissions to do the following and some will take longer than others to achieve so start early:

• Bugs
  • Create a Bugzilla account. Ask for "edit-bugs" permissions. Request for your bugzilla account to be added to mozilla-next-drivers and mozilla-stable-branch-drivers groups in order to set tracking flags. -- file a bug (eg: bug 962151).
  • You can see security sensitive bugs if someone CCs you into the bug, or if you eventually join the security group list. Security permission comes later.
• Repos
  • n.b. If this is going to be a regular set of requests it would probably be better to create a group for them.
  • svn commit access to https://viewvc.svn.mozilla.org/vc/projects/ for modifying product-details -- file a bug (eg: bug 962171, bug 1135512). You will need specific allows for /libs/product-details, /projects/mozilla-europe.org and /projects/mozillaonline.com. Finally, you will need to be in the svn_mozilla LDAP group. (Do this later)
  • hg commit access (scm_level3) -- read http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/committer/, fill out a committer agreement, file a bug (eg: bug 738713 except you'll request commit access, not elevation of current permissions). For this, you will need two owners or peers for a core hg module to vouch for you as described in Commit Access Policy. (later)
  • Example of asking for level 1 commit access (which lets you push changes to the try server): bug 1116226. This is good to start with to get your SSH key and committer agreement set up. (earlier)
• Communications
  • Ask your manager for the permissions to access the Google drive
• Builds - Request Mozilla VPN access (required for ship-it and l10n) (earlier)
  • Ask to be added to the groups shipit and vpn_shipit to get access to the build tool, by filing a bug in Infrastructure & Operations::Infrastructure:LDAP. Example: bug 1135198
  • Ask to be added to the LDAP group called verbatim by filing a bug in Infrastructure & Operations::Infrastructure:LDAP. This will give you permission to access to https://l10n.mozilla.org/ You can ask in the same bug as for shipit. (Note: Is this true? Axel says we should not need to be in the verbatim group.)
• Release Notes
  • Request admin access to https://nucleus.mozilla.org by filing a bug in Websites::Nucleus. Example: bug 1135186 (earlier)

• github
• ssh

Communication Channels

Release Calendar

This page describes the rapid release schedules: https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

• This is the basic public calendar with release dates: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mozilla.com_2d37383433353432352d3939%40resource.calendar.google.com
• This is the release manager team with tons of detail: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=bW96aWxsYS5jb21fZGJxODRhbnI5aTh0Y25taGFiYXRzdHY1Y29AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ - This is really helpful for the first managed release cycle.

E-Mail

Note that some of these mailing lists need approval from an administrator.

• release-mgmt@mozilla.com - ask your manager
• release-drivers - visit https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/release-drivers to add yourself to release-drivers@ once your email is working
• security-group - Here is the policy for getting added to the security-group list: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/security-group/membership/ For the list, visit https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/security-group

You'll need to manually subscribe to:

• release-automation-notifications - visit https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.com/group/release-automation-notifications/ (Contributors need invite)
• mozilla.dev.planning - visit https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-planning
• mozilla.dev.platform - visit https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
• mozilla.dev.tree-management - visit https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tree-management
• Enterprise - visit https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/enterprise
• Stability - vist https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/stability

These are available as newsgroups, Google groups, and Mailman lists

Websites

• Metric (TODO: this url is out of date)
• Crash reports
• This wiki! Create an account at wiki.mozilla.org.

IRC

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC irc://irc.mozilla.org
• irc.mozilla.org:6697
  • #airmozilla - back channel for public broadcasts
  • #developers - monitor check-ins and speak with devs
  • #fx-team - good place to speak with desktop team
  • #mobile - good place to speak with mobile devs
  • #moco [access_key is here [1]]
  • #planning - back channel for product coordination meeting, good place to speak with broader product team
  • #pm - Project management
  • #release-drivers - release related discussions
  • #releng - releng team channel
  • #relman - our team channel
  • #security (ask for channel key) - the security team's channel
  • #qa - QE team channel
  • #www - for speaking with the mozilla.org team in case a push breaks or otherwise doesn't work
• http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/faq/#connect

Many folks uses IRC Cloud as Mozilla as an instance (request an account in Service Now), others run a BNC (an IRC bouncer) (e.g. znc) and/or irssi under screen to get continuous view of traffic.

See below for a local pastebin install, so you don't paste huge amounts in channel.

EtherPad

EtherPad is a great tool for dynamic collaboration during meetings, brainstorming, or other times when you need to collaborate:

• https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/ for general use
• https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/channel-meeting for release information
• https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/firefox43-worry-list Worry list specific to each release (change the version in the url as needed)

Pastebin

There's a local pastebin instance at http://pastebin.mozilla.org/, so you don't need to paste multi-lines into a channel. Use this handy helper script to pipe to pastebin from terminal.

   it creates a new page from stdin, and outputs the url to stdout
   an argument will be interpretted as the syntax highlighting format to use
   sample usage: hg diff | pastebin python | pbcopy (last part mac specific)
   set & export PASTEBIN_NAME if you don't want to post as anonymous.

Planet

Add a bug similar to bug 605709 to get your blog syndicated on http://planet.mozilla.org. You can choose to send every post, or create a feed for a custom tag (eg: 'mozilla'). Having your blog syndicated to planet is a great channel for announcing new features (along with tweeting and posting to newsgroups).

Trello

Platform Status Board

Aha!

Feature Roadmap dashboard

Software

Firefox

1. Please download & install Firefox aurora, beta and release
2. Create new profiles for each version + your own profile. Read Multiple Firefox Profiles for more help with the profile manager.

Firefox Feature Road map is available here: https://mozilla.aha.io/products/ST/feature_cards. To login, choose "login with Okta" and provide your Mozilla LDAP crendentials.

VPN

• Configure your system to access to the Mozilla VPN in order to get access to internal tools. [Install for Mac]. [Install for Windows]
• Then, report a bug in Infrastructure & Operations: Mozilla VPN: ACL requests to get the ACL to ship-it. Example: bug 986037 and bug 1001632
• Note that using the Mozilla DNS servers is necessary to resolve the necessary URLs

Handy Links

How To and Oft-Used

• Release_Management
• Firefox/Channels/Meetings
• ESR FAQ
• Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal
• Release_Management/ESR_Landing_Process

General info on module owners and partners:

• Module owners [All]
• Mozilla Partners Partner Rolodex - Request permissions to your manager if you can't access this document.

Bugzilla

• Install BugzillaJS to be able to open all bugs in a search result.
• Configure the securemail section if you want to see the content of security bugs in your email client. GPG key or SMIME certificate are accepted.

Reports

• release tracking report

Queries

In your bugzilla preferences, under Saved Searches, you can add some of the following to your footer for quick access:

• approval-aurora?
• approval-beta?
• As an exercise, also create the query approval-release? (hint: edit the approval-beta? such, update the value and save it with the new name)
• tracking_firefoxXY? (adjust for current beta version as needed)
• Firefox XY tracked bugs (Make sure to query for the resolved bugs as well as open ones)
• relnote-firefox?
• Also create query for approval-esrXY

Tools

Repos to check out

• Bugzilla nag tool
• svn repo for web pages
• ship-it
• product details
• Nucleus
• Bedrock (Mozilla website)
• mozregression
• braindump (for get_apk.sh)
• mozharness (push_apk.py)

Community Contributors

Some of the above access & permissions will either not be accessible to community contributors or it might take a bit longer to achieve depending on the level & needs of the contributions being made.

Currently when Early Feedback Community Release Managers are onboarded we're basing it on these blog posts (one was based on the other). The short version is that we're looking for people who are interested in understanding how Release Management in a major Open Source project works and our hope is that they learn while also helping us maintain a higher level of quality and visibility into release-affecting issues than a small team of employees can manage.

How that can play out is in several ways. First, any new community member who wants to work with RelMan should have a very informal conversation with a current staff member to discuss their experience, interests, and then ultimately to come up with a good time for a regular meeting that can onboard them (if they're still interested) over a period of weeks & months.

Depending on the volunteer's time availability, usually 1 or 2 hour-long triage sessions a week are feasible. Ideally these will at least sometimes include other members of the team so that the new contributor is getting to know the rest of the members. Eventually the contributor should also start getting invited to (and attending when possible) our 30 min weekly team meeting.

Links to get started

• Nightly Triage
• All Queries
• Landing Plan
• Aurora/DevEdition Landing Process
• Article on our release process in Dr. Dobbs (mostly still true)

Fun Tips & Tricks

Vidyo Conference Rooms

Sometimes when you're on the go and you need to dial into a vidyo room, you may not have time to find the info and having it already loaded in your phone can make a difference. Your RelMan teammates might be able to beam you the contact info from their phones, or you can add them yourself like this:

• Vidyo; Warp Core 6509030800,92,5312#

Rooms to mark as favourites and contacts: Spadina (Toronto), Release Coordination (Virtual room, no physical location)

Subcribe to funstuff

• Request here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391268