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status update

maintained by Tim Rowley <tor@cs.brown.edu>

Last Updated Wednesday September 20, 2000

This status update page is updated every week. To get updates and news throughout the week you are invited to check out mozillaZine, a site devoted to Mozilla advocacy.

Previous Updates


Friends of the Tree

Module Updates
NSS
September 15
Submitted by Wan-Teh Chang <wtc@netscape.com>

I am happy to announce that NSS 3.1 Beta 1 has been released, including a new implementation of the RSA algorithm. This release provides, for the first time, a complete open-source implementation of the Netscape crypto libraries and will be used in a future version of Personal Security Manager for Mozilla.

The release notes can be found here.

The final NSS 3.1 release is scheduled for Oct. 13, 2000. Please help us test NSS and port it to your favorite platforms.

MailNews
September 18
Submitted by Steve Elmer <selmer@netscape.com>

Thanks to:

  • with help from samir, dveditz and mscott, I [Seth] fixed bug 51267 . This was the much dreaded "intermittent failure to load CSS files from JAR packages". (I stole the bug from warren, who is most-doomed.)
  • also, mscott helped joe hewitt fix some nasty build bustage late last night.
  • Thanks to Andrew Wooldridge for adding a focus border to the 3 pane so we now know which pane has focus.
  • Thanks to dbaron for helping with the 1MB per compose window memory leak, which is now fixed, and thanks to Hyatt for fixing the xbl event handler bloat on text elements.
  • Thanks to Conrad Carlen for providing help with DirectoryServiceProvider for StandAlone apps. Also, thanks to Ben for helping with some nitty-gritty chrome rules and dynamic overlays.

Issues:

  • Infrastructure regressions in general getting very expensive
    • Lost a lot of time Wednesday recovering from the progid landing which wasn't pre-flighted on the mail application.
    • Lost a lot of time Thursday night trying to fix a crash on startup on all 3 platforms that got checked in just before the tree closure deadline. Not having people who checked in the offending code available and willing to help track down these kinds of errors is a continuing problem. Basic smoketesting such as running the app would have caught this and saved us lots of time. In short, poor landings and lack of responsiveness by people checking in and not helping to track down problems they introduced continues to cost us time!! These incidences could easily have been prevented and the fact that they happened the day of and the day before a major tree closure is all the more upsetting....
    • Another happy customer: "I have been extremely frustrated this week just getting a commercial build that I can run successfully. I still don't have a commercial build that shows the overlay stuff even after going through all the hack suggestions posted and noted on tinderbox."
    • And another... "another week with a lot of regressions and problems with the build."
    • And another... "Tree closures and unstable builds towards the end (of regular checkin deadlines) took a hit on planned checkins."
    • And another... "Worked on and verified some regression bugs caused by the build last week."
  • Still high nsbeta3 incoming rate
  • Need to find an owner for #51571, since it doesn't look like anything we are doing.

Vacations & Sabbaticals!

MailNews:

DateOpen nsBeta3+ P1/2Open nsBeta3+ P3/4/5New, UnTriaged nsBeta3 NomineesFixed nsBeta3+Fixed non-nsBeta3+
7/31006301046 (and 8 b2+)
8/70135573347 (and 9 b2+)
8/140146435616
8/21696270436
8/2854665337
(26 were P1/2)
13
9/5
28
13
46
44
(29 were P1/2)
7
9/11
23
14
41
24
(16 were P1/2)
4
9/18
21
2
44
28
(20 were P1/2)
4

Profile Manager:

  • Bugs 48981 (standalone app support, shrimp being one of the consumers) and 49088 (dynamic overlays for activation) are fixed and tested. They are under super-review now.

CCK:

  • no status
Architecture
September 18
Submitted by Warren Harris <warren@netscape.com>

Highlights

  • Ray landed his changes to the format of progIDs (now called "contract IDs") -- the single biggest checkin in history! Checking in 1000+ files brought down the build machines due to a flood of email. But we're up and running with them now.
  • Chris updated his machine to a 750 mhz one -- he's going to be twice as productive now.

Lowlights

  • Jar packaging is taking longer than we thought to land. We had some problems with the Shrimp installer that caused us to back out the jar.mn changes. Now we're in the process of reinstating them with improvements that work with Shrimp.

Engineering Status

  • waterson
    • Fix RDF and XUL template arena sizes based on some analysis of the PLArena stats. Checked in, and reduces per-window footprint by 300K.
    • Profile to confirm that dogfood+ bug 50634 ("CNN locks up") is related to async reflow. To nisheeth now.
    • Fixed 46686, crash when booking same URL twice.
    • Fixed 51813 (can't flag messages sometimes), a regression that was introduced when hyatt and I hacked stuff for menu performance in nsbeta2.
    • Really fixed 46134, support >1 value per attribute in XUL templates.
    • Worked on memory flusher stuff, see bug 44352.
  • vidur
    • Additional work on nsbeta3+ bug 50071 - XHTML through the XML codepath.
    • Investigated responsiveness problem on general page load. Tracked it down to patch for bug 36849 (which was subsequently backed out). Discussed event prioritization on Linux with Pavlov. Additional discussions are currently taking place on porkjockeys.
    • Worked with jst@netscape.com to come up with an alternate codepath for editor saving, cut-and-paste and mail quoting that doesn't involve XIF, since XIF introduces considerably bloat and performance cost.
    • Ran Footprint/Performance meeting. Notes posted to porkjockeys.
    • Several internal meetings on web applications.
  • rayw
    • This week was preoccupied with landing the progid changes, keeping the changes merged until I got permission to land it, and fixing a few problems that the change caused. I also spent a lot of time talking to people about technical, strategic, logistical issues.
    • I missed the DOM teleconference due to being busy with progids.
    • The DOM working group voted this week (via e-mail) to finally send the DOM spec down the path to become a recommendation.
    • Spent considerable time discussing the component manager and service manager API changes, which have not been made.
    • I have neglected serious DOM editor work that, now, must be complete before Wednesday, which I will have to make my highest priority for the first part of next week. The work of the DOM WG is heavily heading into level 3. It is also critical that I get David Hyatt to review and compare the API next week before the DOM face-to-face meeting in Boston in a week and a half.
    • I will try to work towards codifying the API changes that we have worked out thus far at the end of the week, but I really feel that working out a post-6.0 strategy is best. There is, for example, enough other things in the XPCOM APIs that need to be cleaned up that I feel it might be appropriate to create a compatibility XPCOM that only loads in the presense of old clients. If we cannot work out a reasonable migration strategy for this type of thing, we are doomed before wed get started.
    • I am also trying after-the-fact to verify that external projects such as OJI and plugins that might have been affected by the progid changes were not.
    • Transitioning XPCOM work to Edward Kandrot.
  • waldemar
    • Worked on ECMAScript Edition 4 spec and tools.
    • Worked on memory log visualization tools.
    • Interviewed Daniel.
    • Attended Vidur's meeting.
    • Played virtual Warren for one more day.
    • Worked on ECMAScript Edition 4 specification.
    • Met with Mike Cowlishaw from IBM to discuss ECMAScript arithmetic issues.
    • Began planning for England TC39 meeting.
  • rpotts
    • no status
  • jband
    • Did my bit to chase, report, and help fix the current crop of bugs uncovered by Purify.
    • Did more prep work on bug 46707 to get us using typelibs stored in zip files to reduce memory footprint. This looks like only a 50k-100k win.
    • Fixed bug 13125 to allow the use of xpconnect wrapped native objects as protypes to which xpcom components implemented in JavaSCript can delegate. There we a number of people clamoring for this.
    • Spent time chasing Win98 specific bugs - without a great deal of success.
    • Spent time brainstorming with vidur, beard, and rayw on new web application framework ideas.
  • warren
    • Working on jar packaging.
  • dprice
    • Checked in jar packaging for unix, but disabled it until jar file restructuring can happen.
    • Worked on adding the + feature to jar.mn files to allow overrides.
  • scc
    • string work
      • bug #52721: some API changes to nsSlidingSubstring that Vidur needs for his parser work
      • made flat strings use .get() rather than implicit operators; still need to outlaw the operators, though
    • helped other people; reviewed, tested, and/or checked-in their patches
      • helped Pav with C/C++ syntax
      • bug #52254: reviewed jdunn's patch
      • bug #18352: modified Mac projects on shaver's behalf
      • bug #50811: modified Mac projects on edburn's behalf, and helped him understand the best order for checking files into the tree
      • sheriffed on Wednesday
      • helped Simon Fraser hack perl for build scripts
    • attended meetings
      • macdev meeting (1.5 hours)
      • mozilla.org staff meeting (2 hours)
    • miscellaneous
      • managed to install Yellow Dog Linux on my PowerBook; got X working ... soon I hope to have working Airport support so I can actually pull a tree and build mozilla
  • wade
    • no status
  • kandrot
    • Implemented and checked in a fix for part one of bug #46709, which deals with Component Manager startup time and bloat.
    • Learned all about build breaks and why one needs one of each platform to build on.
    • Found and filed bug #51944, which deals with bloat in CSS's CSSStyleRuleImpl and dup'ing of data.
    • Fixed bug #51944, which removed 200k of bloat.
    • Changed the way prototype attributes for XUL are stored, reducing bloat by 470k.
    • Set up the Win machine for which I had been waiting.
    • Sat in on the Mac Dev meeting to find out some of the Mac performance issues.
  • bruce AT puremagic.com
    • Fixed #50876, the nasty Solaris bustage.
    • Filed bugs on:
      • UMRs: 50849, 50851, 50864, 50871 (dup), 50889.
      • MLKs: 50614, 50856, 50858 50861, 50862, 50863, 50866, 50878, 50884, 508886, 50887 (dup), 50888 (dup).
      • ABRs: 50498, 50499, 50613.
      • FMW (free memory write): 50867
XPToolkit
September 18
Submitted by Peter Trudelle <trudelle@netscape.com>

Summary

  • The XPToolkit team resolved 64 bugs in the last week, fixing 40 of these, including 24 '+'. For details, see our resolved bug list.
  • We have 13 + bugs remaining.

Highlights

  • Mike Pinkerton (pinkerton)
    • Use filtering based on file type if we fail on the IC check in file picker dialog (50312, 51830)
    • fix regression of mac check menus (51685)
    • spinning watch cursor on mac when gecko locks up UI (52108)
    • fixed DnD getting in the way of listening to DOM mouse events (43258, 52541)
    • fixing access key conflicts with menus (40071)
  • Chris Saari (saari)
    • fixed a few nsbeta3+ bugs and hunted regressions.
    • Focus is better than it was at the beginning of the week, with the exception of a few new issues on the Mac which I'm working on (particularly, initial focus on new windows got broke). I'll need danm's help with those next week, as it looks like dialogs are forwarding the deactivate event from their parent to the dialog (which we really don't want). Once that is fixed I think initial focus with textfields (like Open Location) should start working on MacOS too. This may well be the reason that dialogs have never worked correctly with focus memory!
  • Daniel Matejka (danm)
    • (on vacation nearly all of last week)
  • Eric Vaughan (evaughan)
    • Fixed numerous bugs: 49408, 52124, 51894, 30548, 37836, 40951
  • Stuart Parmenter (pavlov)
    • lots of reviews some work on 51603
  • David Hyatt (hyatt)
    • fixed xbl security bugs
    • fixed tree widget bugs
  • Dan Rosen (dr)
    • resolved 5026Ill-formed browserBindings.xul crashes mozilla
    • helped with 39957-family of bugs as much as possible
    • fix in hand for bugscape 2324, 1896, possibly 1292 (should make nscp people's lives much easier in coming weeks).
  • Brian Ryner (bryner)
    • 51952 (disable NS_BOX_ASSERTION in release builds)
    • 51903 (assertions switching pref panels)
    • checked in contributor patches for 52054 (incorrect gtk system color), 41330 (shift-up/down in trees)
    • made us not dependent on building extensions/psm-glue (18352 - extensions cleanup)

Lowlights

Priorities

  • pinkerton:
    • 51603 Crash when entering the subject of the compose window
    • 51447 Help menu needs to support submenus
    • 52201 Tooltips interfere with accessing context menus
  • saari:
    • 52150 Mail Composition: Cursor not present
    • 53017 editor does not regain focus after dialog is dismissed.
  • hyatt:
    • 52810 style buttons missing
    • Help out others with their nsbeta3+ bugs
  • evaughan:
    • Helping on 2 beta3+ bugs one from saari and on from pinkerton.
    • Hope to be available to help on others again very soon.
  • pavlov:
    • 49141 New window performance
  • danm:
    • 51619 Strange little windows are dangerous for your health
    • 2020 Crash exiting browser
    • 52548 Sidebar Links opening in Composer window.
    • 49891 Unable to use the app after creating a News Account and gett
  • dr:
    • 52217 (need help tracking down where this is happening)
    • 2327 linux, mac?: Net2Phone shouldn't be in the toolbar customiza
    • help investigate bugscape 2321
    • 47395 may become high priority again, as 24645/52359 is currently infeasible
  • bryner
    • 52216 (tree crash on item removal)
    • 51833 (disappearing folders in ftp)

Dogfood

  • 49141 New window performance

Beta Stoppers

Risk

New features still landing by way of mozilla.org can cause regressions in Seamonkey, although they are not necessarily needed in Seamonkey. One such feature landed Friday, after testing on only one platform, and broke all Mac sub-menus, contributing to long tree closure, and sucking up significant Netscape engineering time. I can't help but wonder how many other regressions we're seeing have a similar cause. I know the reasons for staying on the trunk this long, but at some point the risk becomes too much relative to the time remaining. We need to branch ASAP.
XML/DOM
September 18
Submitted by Nisheeth Ranjan <nisheeth@netscape.com>

Summary

  • We currently have 12 nsbeta3+ bugs with a fix in hand for 4 of them.
  • We currently have 11 beta 3 nominated bugs.
  • The XML/DOM team resolved 38 bugs last week.
  • Tom Pixley got rid of 5 nsbeta3+ bugs and reduced his nsbeta3+ bug count to 0! Great work, Tom!
  • Peter van der Beken (peter.vanderbeken@pandora.be) has enabled XSLT hooks by default in Mozilla. This means that people can build the Transformiix XSLT processor, add it to the components directory, and start playing with XSLT transforms in Mozilla.

People

  • Tom Pixley is in Mountain View this week, from Tuesday, September 12 through September 19. He will be using the machine in the cube two spaces away from Clayton. Stop by and say hi!
  • Nisheeth Ranjan will be away to New York to attend the XML Query face to face meeting from Wednesday, September 20 through Friday, September 22.

Accomplishments of last week

  • Harish Dhurvasula (harishd)
    • Checked in fixes for a couple of beta3+ bugs
    • Worked on bug 49115 ( Will be applying the patch to a good tree! )
    • Worked on bug 50213.
    • Triaged my bug list - Current Status: 2 beta3+, 1 nominated, 3 untargeted )
  • Heikki Toivonen (heikki)
    • Sent a message to the XML Xlinking WG about Netscape's position with XLink, XML Base and XPointer.
    • Fixed Select All case of bug 46085.
    • Helped joki with bug 47022.
    • Working on 47319 (TOC button not working always). Currently no ideas what is going wrong, event gets fired and it looks like it gets handled (even though JS is not executed).
    • I have a partial fix for 50478 (events bubble but report bubbles=false). We have wrong logic in GetBubbles method. The bigger problem is that just about every element bubbles in Mozilla. This is P3 right now so the big problem probably won't be attacked.
    • Working on 52585 (images load event bubbles which can confuse document load event handlers). I have a fix but it is still buggy.
    • Learned about our XML & DOM test suites etc.
  • Tom Pixley (joki)
    • Fully fixed 3 of the 5 nsbeta3+ bugs by the Sept 14th tree freeze
    • Fully fixed 1 of the others except for what seems to be an edge case or simply a very complex test case. I marked the initial bug fixed and opened a new bug for the edge case
    • Partially fixed the final bug which was a 4x compat bug. More or less 4x lets you cancel text input either by cancelling the keydown or keypress event. I made the keypress part of that work in mozilla but the keydown is much harder and won't happen now. By fixing keypress we now have a workaround though. I annotated the bug with the new status and workaround, removed the nsbeta3, and futured it.
  • Johnny Stenback (jst)
    • Fixed nsbeta3+ bug 51562. Made nsXMLContentSink use a nsCOMPtr to make it not leak nsXMLProcessingInstructions.
    • Fixed nsbeta3+ bug 51034. element.getElementsByTagName() was throwing a NS_NOINTERFACE exception due to the wrong IID passed to a QI call (this also caused a nsContentList leak)
    • Fixed nsbeta3+ bug 52572. Updated the DOM intefaces in mozilla to match the current DOM Level 2 PR.
    • Fixed nsbeta3+ bug 48161. Fixed getAttribute() on a XUL element to conform to the DOM Level 2 spec.
    • Checked in part of the fix for nsbeta3+ bug 42321. Avoid running JS_GC() many times per window open/close, once per window open is enough. Patch mostly done by alex@cendio.se.
  • Nisheeth Ranjan (nisheeth)
    • Triaged my untargeted bug list.
    • Fixed nsbeta3+ bug 49579.
    • Attended a two hour long XML Query teleconference on Wednesday.
    • Met with Chris Petersen on Friday to understand the current state of XML testing. Heikki Toivonen attended the meeting.
    • Met with Gerardo Kraveternik on Friday to understand the current state of DOM testing. Gerardo gave a demo of the DOM test harness. Bob Clary, an independent programmer who has developed a JS test harness for DOM 1/2 testing teleconferenced in and talked about the architecture of his test harness. Heikki Toivonen and Eric Krock also attended the meeting.
    • Attended a day long class on Project Management on Thursday.
    • Tested MOZ_XSL enabled builds on Linux and Windows and provided feedback to Peter van der Beken.

Plans for this week

  • Harish Dhurvasula (harishd)
    • Fix my remaining beta3+ bugs
    • Will try to trace down performace hot spots
    • Fix leaks if any
  • Heikki Toivonen (heikki)
    • Fix remaining nsbeta3+ bugs
  • Tom Pixley (joki)
    • I have at least one 'egk' bug (on Eric Krock's must fix bug list) to work on.
  • Johnny Stenback (jst)
    • Continue working on my remaining nsbeta3+ bugs
  • Nisheeth Ranjan (nisheeth)
    • Work on remaining nsbeta3+ bugs.
    • Attend the XML Query face to face meeting in New York on Thursday and Friday.

Lowlights

  • None.

Escalations

  • None.
Necko/Imglib
September 18
Submitted by Gagan Saksena <gagan@netscape.com>

Summary

  • nsbeta3+ still pouring in...
  • regressions still high.

Dogfood and Risks

  • none

Beta Stoppers

  • nsbeta3+ count 23

Highlights

  • neeti
    • Worked on cache eviction bugs with dp
    • Fixed bugs 48292, 48401, 42606
  • pnunn
    • fixed: 13718*, 50778*, 51249*
    • duplicates: 36785*, 42891, 52079, 52088, 52227
    • WorksForMe/invalid: 50281, 52785
    • Reassign: 46871, 52074
    • current focus: #41268, caching animations.
    • #47098, throbber MLK
  • gagan
    • Continuing to triage bugs for the whole team.
    • Set up a hire status page to allow for better tracking of the process of hiring.
    • Worked fixes for 2 top necko crashers. Haven't check them in as yet.

Lowlights

  • SSL proxy connections seem to have regressed pretty bad.
  • No status from ruslan and gordon this week.

Issues/Escalations

  • None.
Schedule
September 19
Submitted by Phil Peterson <phil@netscape.com>

As requested by brendan@mozilla.org, here are the tree rules Netscape is using as we finish up the Netscape 6 (aka Seamonkey) commercial product


Here's a summary of the tree rules, as presented at the 9/13 all-hands meeting and the 9/12 seamonkey-leads. We're making two process-wise changes:
  1. Fix the right bugs. To make sure we're fixing the bugs which really need to be fixed (and not the bugs we can live with) PDT is doing a second-level review on triage approvals made by the eng+PM triage teams. Triage teams do [nsbeta3+] and PDT does [nsbeta3++], beginning 9/21.
  2. Fix the right bugs the right way. In an effort to reduce regressions at this critical time, we're working with mozilla.org to ask engineering leaders to do more in-depth code reviews. This system will be described in more detail by brendan, but it's going to use the mailing list (and newsgroup mirror) mozilla-reviewers@mozilla.org. We'll start this as soon as mozilla.org has the reviewers ready.
Here's a timeline of what kind of work we expect to do between now and RTM. The priorities shown are defined using the PDT priority list:
Notes:
  • Criteria generally applicable across the product.
  • Some engineers may not have any P1 bugs -- your only bug may be a P3.
  • We may not get all bugs in of any of these categories fixed, but it's a way to compare one bug with another.
  • The triage down to 3.5 per engineer (~300 across the project) must be done by Friday.
P1
  • High frequency crash (e.g. top 100)
  • Serious data loss
  • No workaround
  • Major contractual requirement
  • High profile partner
  • Legal correctness
P2
  • High profile backwards compatibility
  • High profile functionality
  • Obscure work around exists
P3
  • Obscure crashers
  • Generic standards
  • Easily recoverable data loss (e.g. form fill, preference)
  • Obscure data loss
  • Low profile functionality
  • Obvious workaround

The timeline:

  • 9/14 - 9/21: Only P1 and P2 bugs can be fixed, with a code review from mozilla-reviewers@mozilla.org. Managers are minusing bugs rated P3, P4, and P5, to be complete by 9/15, which leaves only P1 and P2 nsbeta3+ bugs open.
  • 9/21 - 9/28: Only B3 pull-it-off-the-wire bugs can be fixed on the B3 branch. PDT doing approval of [nsbeta3+] bugs using [nsbeta3++] notation. Code reviews from mozilla-reviewers@mozilla.org
  • 9/28 - 10/15: Only P1 bugs can be fixed for RTM, with code review from mozilla-reviewers@mozilla.org. PDT doing approval of [rtm+] bugs using [rtm++] notation. Triage teams must give rtm nominations [rtm+] in order to get an [rtm++] from PDT.
  • 10/15 until it's done: Bake time. Only pull-it-off-the-wire bugs can be fixed, with code review from mozilla-reviewers@mozilla.org. PDT still doing approval using [rtm++] notation.

Anyone who has difficulty making their work fit in this framework should email PDT or come see us at 4pm in Star Trek (3pm on Fridays)

One last reminder: UI freeze for localization is 9/14 at midnight. Any changes which impact l10n after that must be cleared with the l10n group.

NSS
September 19
Submitted by Wan-Teh Chang <wtc@netscape.com>

The NSS team met yesterday and decided on the following 3.1 schedule.

Fri 9/29
Checkin cutoff. Code freeze starts. (Note: we are not planning to branch for 3.1 at this point.)
Fri 10/6
Release candidate.
Fri 10/13
Final release (RTM). Tip re-opens for new development.
OS/2
September 20
Submitted by Michael Kaply <mkaply@us.ibm.com>

We are continuing to make nightly builds available at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/warpzilla.

Major code checkins recently include the splash screen, as well as fixes to menus and general nsWindow work.

Our primary focus right now is keyboard/accelerator keys and then we will move on to font work.

Bidi
September 20
Submitted by Michael Kaply <mkaply@us.ibm.com>
We are merging the branch up to the tip with hopes of a carpool after the M18 branch.
Roadmap
September 20
Submitted by Brendan Eich <brendan@mozilla.org>

See http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html.

This new roadmap was updated the other day, but it felt "draft-y" and I didn't announce it while we were getting the code reviewer cohort tuned up (now splashed -- see also the reviewers document and the mozilla.reviewers newsgroup)..

The new roadmap does not give airtight proofs or use the precise language of Mathematics. But it addresses some important points raised in the thread to which this message is a followup, and it defines a rough schedule and process that we'll be using to manage the Mozilla project, led by drivers@mozilla.org.

Your comments are welcome at any time, note followup-to: setting (or feel free to mail me). I promise to put frequently asked questions in the roadmap-faq this time! The drivers will be meeting virtually and coming up with some definitions for mozilla 1.0 and beyond, and those will show up in roadmap, or at least linked from roadmap.

Previous Updates