The Review Queues

• Most nominations for full review are taking less than 5 days to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 3 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 3 days.

These stats are taken from last week’s queue report:

• 21 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 25 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 9 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Our New Years Challenge has really paid off and add-ons are now reviewed almost immediately after they are submitted. Most add-ons waiting in the queue are waiting for actions from admin reviewers or their developers.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Test Your Add-ons for Memory Leaks!

The MemShrink team was assembled some time ago to work on reducing Firefox’s memory footprint. Many memory bugs have been filed and fixed for Firefox, but add-ons are also a significant factor in how much memory is being used.

There is an ongoing effort to track and stomp memory leaks in add-ons. Here’s where you can help, either by testing the add-ons you created, or testing the add-ons you use. Please read the article on Zombie Compartments, particularly the add-ons section. It should give you some pointers on how to find leaks and how to avoid them. The short version is don’t hold any references to DOM objects after the document is closed.

The AMO review team is already aware of this, and we have added memory leaks to our testing policies. Add-on versions that leaks may not get full review.

If you have any questions about this, post them in the comments.

Firefox 11

The Firefox 11 compatibility blog post is up now.

The compatibility bump will be run very soon, but it will be run differently than last time. Since Firefox 10 an above have add-on compatibility turned on by default, there’s no longer a need to do maxVersion bumping. So, we’re going to do run the usual compatibility checks, but only email developers if their add-ons don’t pass some of the checks. These add-ons that don’t will also be added to the compatibility override list so users know they are incompatible, provided that the compatibility bug really causes problems in the way the add-on works.

Firefox 12

Firefox 12 already hit the Aurora channel, so the compatibility updates should be coming soon.

• We released a hotfix release, 1.4.3. It fixes an important regression in 1.4, 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 and should be taken by anybody currently using one of those releases. More details here.
• FOSDEM happened, there were Jetpack presentations and discussions. Henrik Skupin blogged about it, and contributed a patch.
• Andrew Sutherland has written an add-on using the SDK to break down Firefox memory usage by tab: or, to “help you lay blame more easily”

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 253
• Bugs created last week: 20
• Bugs fixed last week: 12
• Total SDK-based Addons on AMO: 432
• Open pull requests on Github: 25

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2012-02-07 17:43:52 PST

Meeting Brief

• The Add-on Builder is preparing for its 1.0 release. We have one blocker, bug 724766, otherwise things are looking good.
• We had a brief 1.4.3 postmortem: concluded that we need to improve test coverage for beta releases.
• There’s a lot of demand to make the SDK support Thunderbird. The SDK team does not have the resources to support Thunderbird officially, but should not prevent Thunderbird from working by, for example, throwing an exception when Thunderbird is detected.
• Here’s a blog post from Dietrich on using the SDK to deliver features into Firefox.

Full minutes are available here:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-2-7#Minutes

Come and see how easy it is to create add-ons for Firefox with Add-on Builder and the Add-on SDK. If you’re a Web developer and know HTML, JavaScript and CSS, you already have what it takes to make great add-ons.

One lucky raffle winner will receive an Android tablet!

Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: 6:00 – 8:00pm
Location: Mozilla SF – 2 Harrison Street, 7th Floor

** Reserve your spot now! **

• We released two point releases, 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 to address issues related to deploying SDk 1.4 on the Add-on Builder site.
• Jorge pointed out an important compatibility issue with SDK 1.3 and the upcoming Firefox 11 release in his compatibility post. We will be re-packing add-ons built with 1.3 and lower prior to the release of Firefox 11, but in the meantime you should base all current and new releases on SDK 1.4.
• There were a couple of community-developed modules discussed on the google group this week, including madarche’s OrderedMap implementation and Ben Buksch’s collections module. This is exciting to see, particularly because they are now collaborating on a single implementation.
• Looking forward to participating at FOSDEM this weekend!

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 244
• Bugs created last week: 13
• Bugs fixed last week: 6
• Total SDK-based Addons on AMO: 385
• Open pull requests on Github: 25

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2012-01-31 11:30:03 PST

Meeting Brief

• Add-on Builder: continuing to prepare for 1.0 release, next steps include refreshing vide content on AMO and bug fix releases over the next 2 weeks.
• SDK: released 1.4.1 & 1.4.2 to address Builder integration issues, 1.5b3 is being spun this afternoon.
• Round table: need to discuss and clarify 3rd party module integration path into core, in particular where to publish proposals.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-1-31#Minutes

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=718230

While this issue primarily affects the Builder, it will also affect any addons packaged using 1.4.0 & 1.4.1 that print debug statements to Firefox’s console window using console.log. Using console.log to print debug statements to the terminal when running an addon using the cfx tool is not affected by this issue.

If you have any questions or issues with this hotfix release, please ask in any of the following areas:

• post to our discussion group
• chat with us on irc.mozilla.org #jetpack
• report a bug
• check out the source and contribute bug fixes, enhancements, or documentation

For more information on the Jetpack Project check out our wiki

A few notes regarding Firefox 10

If everything goes according to plan, Firefox 10 will be pushed to the public in less than a week. There are a couple of points that are worth mentioning:

• Starting with Firefox 10, add-ons will default to compatible. All add-on versions that have compatibility up to Firefox 4 or higher will automatically work in Firefox 10 and all future releases. This excludes add-ons that are not extensions (themes, dictionaries, language packs) and add-ons with binary components. We will also keep an override list that we will fill with all add-on versions that are known to break due to compatibility problems. This is what has kept me busy for the past weeks. We need your help to keep the override list up to date.
  
• Rename omni.jar to omni.ja. If your add-on references omni.jar directly, it will break now that it has been renamed. We recommend that you find more flexible ways to reference these files, since most should be accessible through chrome URLs.

For more information about Firefox 10 compatibility, please read the full compatibility update.

Firefox 11

• Remove the no-argument form of requestAnimationFrame. This function now takes one mandatory argument.
• Remove nsIDOMNSElement. This affects many SDK-based (Jetpack) add-ons using old versions of the SDK. We encourage you to update to the latest stable version as soon as possible.
• Remove the crazy navigator preservation behavior. If your add-on sets expando properties to the navigator object in web pages and relies on them keeping their state while navigating within the same domain, this concerns you.
• Remove ‘countryCode’ from nsIDOMGeoPositionAddress.idl. The non-standard countryCode property was removed.
• Kill dynamic containers. This is an obscure feature that was added to the bookmarks code but it was rarely used.
• Remove nsICharsetResolver.

Other important changes are noted in Firefox 11 for developers.

New stuff in 11!

• Support HTML parsing in XMLHttpRequest. The documentation page for this feature is being written at the moment, but it already has useful info.
• Sync add-ons. It seems Firefox Sync will be able to sync installed add-ons across devices. I doubt it will be able to sync all of your add-on configuration if your add-on writes custom files in the profile or elsewhere, though.
• Add a scriptable way to set a dock badge text. For Mac OS add-ons that want to write to the dock icon.

Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything missing or incorrect on these lists. If your add-on breaks on Firefox 10 or 11, I’d like to know.

Because of the Default to Compatible feature, we are no longer doing compatibility bumps like we did before. We will still run the validation but only send you a message if your add-on is identified as incompatible. There will be no more automatic version upgrades, given that there’s no point anymore.

• We’re releasing SDK 1.5b2 this afternoon, including updated localization documentation.
• If you’re interested in addon localization progress, you should read over Zbigniew Braniecki’s insightful feedback post on our html localization proposal.
• Yesterday I posted a note about SDK 1.4 and the Addon Builder

Quick Stats

• Total open bugs: 240
• Bugs created last week: 12
• Bugs fixed last week: 7
• Total SDK-based Addons on AMO: 446
• Open pull requests on Github: 25

Note: the stats above are based on the queries I linked to for each item. If you have suggestions on how these queries might be made more accurate,please comment below. Stats generated at 2012-01-24 08:40:59 PST

Meeting Brief

• Builder: next push will fix a number of regressions from last week’s push and introduce the new builder helper.
• SDK: some reports of problems in 1.4 with content script permissions change. Need to follow up with a bug and investigate alternatives.
• Round table: Talos testing work going well; Alex is meeting with the UX team to discuss widget changes on Wednesday at 9AM PST.

Full minutes are available here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Jetpack/Weekly_Meeting/2012-1-24#Minutes

The Review Queues

• Most nominations for full review are taking less than 10 days to review.
• Most updates are being reviewed within 5 days.
• Most preliminary reviews are being reviewed within 5 days.

These stats are taken from last week’s queue report:

• 39 nominations in the queue awaiting review.
• 50 updates in the queue awaiting review.
• 49 preliminary submissions in the queue awaiting review.

Our New Years Challenge has really paid off and add-ons are now reviewed almost immediately after they are submitted. Most add-ons waiting in the queue are waiting for actions from admin reviewers or their developers.

If you’re interested in joining the AMO Editors team and help us review add-ons, please visit our wiki page.

Firefox 10

The Firefox 10 compatibility post is here. The compatibility bump to Firefox 10 was run last week, so any add-ons with compatibility under 10.* should be tested and manually upgraded in the Developer Hub, if possible.

You can run the standalone compatibility tool if you want to test your add-on yourself or if it isn’t hosted on AMO.

The Add-ons Default to Compatible feature is progressing, and we expect to land on Firefox 10. Once this is in place, your compatibility worries will be minimized, and we’ll be taking a more active role in letting developers know if their add-ons are incompatible with a new version of Firefox. This feature will be a big win for both developers and Firefox users, so we’re very excited about it.

Firefox 11

A compatibility blog post for Firefox 11 is coming up. I apologize for the delay.

If you are a Firefox developer, support professional, or contributor, your help is critical—if you think there might be a compatibility issue in any of the release channels, please file a bug here so we can take action right away if needed.

In general, it would be super helpful for everyone to install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter and let us know through the reporter if your add-ons are working properly.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

More Details
The last few weeks, Mozilla IT has addressed numerous stability issues with AMO and VAMO (versioncheck.addons.mozilla.org, which handles add-on update pings) and made significant changes to the network configuration to keep AMO up and running. One of those changes was the addition of a caching proxy in our Amsterdam datacenter, which was brought online on December 16 to receive 1/3 of the update ping traffic.

Unfortunately, these new servers were not configured to send their logs to our metrics processing tools, so those pings were not counted and the logs are no longer available. We were not immediately sure of the scope of the problem due to both the ongoing stability issues and expected decline in usage during the holidays and fluctuation in usage after a release. The log configuration was corrected yesterday afternoon and Metrics is validating today whether the logs are being processed correctly going forward.

Mozilla IT and Metrics are working on automated ways to prevent this from happening in the future as we continue to deploy AMO around the world. We know that many developers depend on these statistics, and apologize for the data lost over the past 2.5 weeks.