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== Thunderbird Release Drivers ==Thunderbird drivers are primarily concerned with ensuring the quality, stability and security of the Thunderbird releases. This responsibility covers all of the aurora, beta, release and esr channels.Thunderbird drivers may decide to advance or delay features or fixes through the release train if it affects quality, stability or security.
The active team that is primarily responsible for Thunderbird-driving releases is intended to be a low:* Jean-overhead process to make sure that as Baptist Piacentino (jb@mo, Product Lead)* Mark Banner (:standard8, Release Manager)* David Bienvenu (:bienvenu, Thunderbird converges on releases that have the important bugs fixed and high-impact features implemented. We may or may not achieve this initially; if you have suggestions about how we can do betterArchitect)* Blake Winton (:bwinton, User Experience Lead)* Ludovic Hirlimann (:usul, Quality Assurance Lead)* Roland Tanglao (:roland, please let us know.User Support Lead)
Most relevant discussion will happen publiclyMark, typically in [[Thunderbird/tb-planning|tb-planning]]. People who David and Blake have concerns that affect driving that they're not comfortable discussing publicly should email them permissions to [mailto:grant or deny tracking and approvals on bugs and patches.The Thunderbird drivers list (thunderbird-drivers@mozilla.org thunderbird-drivers@mozilla) consists of the active team as well as those involved in producing Thunderbird releases, and appropriate advisers. At the team's discretion, it may also contain third parties who are responsible for producing distributed builds of Thunderbird, e.g.org]Linux distrutions, so that they are advised as to when builds and releases are taking place. Currently Active Drivers* David Ascher (davida)* Mark Banner (Standard8)* David Bienvenu (bienvenu)* Bryan Clark (clarkbw)* Magnus Melin (mkmelin)* Dan Mosedale (dmose)* Phil Ringnalda (philor)
== Managing Releases ==
Thunderbird-drivers track releases by the use of flags in bugzilla. There are two types of releases that are tracked which have different rules due to the nature of releases: * Next major release** This is work towards the next major release of Thunderbird.** Generally only bugs that blocking the release are tracked, but as the release becomes closer, patches that may be landed are typically restricted and require approval.* Security and Stability release** These are small security based releases to an existing release of Thunderbird. Due to the nature of these releases, only small low-risk patches are generally accepted.** All patches landing in security releases require approval.** Drivers will also track blocking and wanted bugs. == Flags and how they are used == * For the next major release, see the [[Thunderbird/Release_Driving/Next_Major_Release_Policy|next major release policy.]]* For security and stability releases, see the [[Thunderbird/Security_And_Stability_Releases/Rules|rules page]] which contains all the details about blocking and approvals. == Target Milestones ===
A bug is typically marked as fixed when it lands on trunk (i.e. comm-central). The only exception to this is when it does not actually apply to trunk, but only to a stable branch.
To check the current blocking and wanted bugs for a release, we have a [http://hg.mozilla.org/users/bugzilla_standard8.plus.com/drivertools/raw-file/default/bugtracking/index.html bug tracking page here].
=== Fundamental Fact: Scarcity ===
Keep in mind that there are orders of magnitude more bug fixes & feature requests than can possibly be shipped in any given release. A particular bug not making the cut for this next release doesn't necessarily mean it's not important, but it _does_ mean that thunderbird-drivers feels that there are other bugs that are even more important.
== For Release Drivers ==
