Firefox Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 99. Find Out What Has Been Fixed

Work out the differences between minor Firefox
versions without reading the code.

Every day brings more bug fixes. Every day brings several nightly
builds to play with. This hack shows how to find out
what's in a given Firefox version, whether
it's new features or fixes for known problems. You
can get lightweight or detailed reports on the changes that have been
made, so let's start with the lightweight ones.

9.10.1. Release Notes

Every major Firefox release, whether it be 1.0 or 1.1, comes with a
brief overview of the features that it contains. Go to http://www.getfirefox.com to find out the
major items made available or new in such
releases.

A more systematic breakdown of feature changes is provided by the
highly organized Burning Edge web site (http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/),
which reports on the code changes made by the Mozilla community. Look
here for a stack of release summaries, including one that forecasts
the contents of the next minor release.

The FAQ at the Burning Edge site (http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/faql)
also lists a number of other resources that provide release
information.

9.10.2. Change Logs

More detailed and more up to date than release notes are
change logs
listing bug fixes. There are two excellent resources to turn to. The
first is Asa Dotzler's release change logs, which
are single HTML pages. These logs are poorly advertised and rarely
linked to, but they provide the most authoritative list of bug fixes
available. Under the current arrangements, the change logs are
located here:

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/versionhttp://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.8a5

The other source of change logs is the front page of the Burning Edge
web site:

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/

9.10.3. Tree Status

At the absolute bleeding edge of Mozilla and Firefox, you can find
individual changes that have made their way into the Mozilla CVS
source repository and the automated compilation system. To do so,
have a play with the Bonsai query interface: http://bonsai.mozilla.org. It provides
reports on changes to the source code. As a starting point try this
set of values:

Module:

All files in the repository

Branch:

HEAD (exact match)

Directory:

mozilla/browser

File:

Leave this blank (exact match)

Sort By:

Date

Date:

In the last week

Finally, beyond the bleeding edge lies
Tinderbox
(http://tinderbox.mozilla.org).
Choose SeaMonkey
when you're directed to the list of source code
trees. This interface adds CVS change records to compilation outcomes
and concludes whether the changes were good ideas or not. The tabular
output is green when all's well, yellow when the
jury's still out, and red when code changes are
stopping nightly (or more frequent) builds from completing properly.