Doing a Firefox release (3.5.8)

I started two weeks ago to do the 3.5.8 release for Firefox and this is the first official release that I have done.
It has been a great experience and the work that my coworkers have done has made it possible to be this smooth (there is room for improvements).

The process that I had to go through (simplified) is the following:

• Week 1

1. Prepare some patches to bump the version and be ready for the official "go"
2. Trigger the builds. check that every builder that was triggered it completed
3. Start signing the windows builds and verify signatures
4. Add product to Socorro/Crash-stats

• Week 2

1. Create major update
2. Push the updates to the beta channel

• Week 3
1. Add bouncer entries
2. Request virus check
3. Push the builds to the mirrors
4. Create xulrunner builds
5. Push the updates live
6. Add final release symlink

Obviously this is a much simplified view of what it is involved but it gives a good idea and a time breakdown. Important to note that this is when a release does not require re-spins and it is not a fire-drill release.

I am glad it all worked out well and next time I will expect to commit less mistakes.

For more information read the build notes or bug 543761.

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.