Gaia/Meeting/2016-03-01

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Gaia Weekly Meeting

Alternate Meeting Times:

  • "TPE/EU" meeting time: Tuesdays 02:00 Pacific, 11:00 CEST
  • "EU/US" meeting time: Tuesdays 9:00 Pacific, 19:00 CEST

Announcements

Talk

  • B2G OS Transition Plan - Fabrice
  • Plan: Bring the B2G codebase closer to Firefox browser codebase, for easier maintenance and closer alignment with the Web platform, so that the community can take over the smartphone project.
  • Lots of stuff will break.

API removals:

  • Remove packaged apps altogether
  • Certified permissions model is gone
  • Some APIs like the IAC and DataStore APIs will go away
  • System Messages API goes away
  • WebActivities will be gone
  • Language packs gone
  • mozApps API is gone
  • Marketplace is gone
  • Themes are gone (can be replaced by WebExtensions)
  • Sensor APIs, anything permissions based (compared to certified) will not be removed (but might be broken)

Logistics:

  • Temporary strategy is local HTTP server to serve apps from until Service Workers is ready.
  • Work will be carried out on a "transition" Gaia branch and use the "pine" Gecko branch
  • Aus working on automation for builds and making sure we’re not breaking the build
  • Can’t merge back to master/m-c until TV branches for their 2.6 release
  • Staff will get the platform to the point at which it’s functional enough for community to take over.
  • Profile migration will not be supported. This means a device will basically be wiped when upgrading to this new system.
  • Lots of open questions, such as who is going to maintain build infrastructure, etc.

Current status:

  • System app is booting and homescreen is starting but basically everything else is broken
  • Experimenting with making the system app into chrome
  • Experimenting with turning some DOM APIs into local web services

Q&A

  • Result is closer to the Web
  • Codebase is closer to regular Firefox
  • What do we tell people coming to our channels asking about building Firefox OS apps - point to contemporary web apps, acknowledging those aren’t quite ready yet
  • Would be good to have a migration guide for FxOS app developers
  • WADI is active, engage them to help orient FxOS app devs to contemporary Web apps

Comments

  • Ari posted a blog post about the direction : https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/03/01/update-on-connected-devices/
    • Dogfood Aries devices both whitelisted and nonwhitelisted builds are being switched to dogfood=0 dogfood builds. People will be able to disable the metricking if they want.
    • Phones are TBD what will happen with them, a thought is to let the dogfooders keep them and do whatever they want with them (at their own risk).
    • Note: After transition they will have to reflash their phone.
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