RC3 is Firefox 1.5
If you're using Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3, congratulations: you have Firefox 1.5. The English (US) version of Firefox 1.5 is just Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3 with a renamed installer. Thanks for helping to test the release candidate. You can verify that you have Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3 (rather than an older release candidate) by selecting "About Mozilla Firefox" from the "Help" menu; you should see something ending with "Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5".
November 29th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Maybe I’m missing the point, but this has to be the worst example of version management I have ever seen. Two different pieces of software should never have the same version number. If they did, why use version numbers in the first place? I know, I know … “they are the same piece of software.” So why did we call it RC3 and not just 1.5 final? It seems to me that RC3 should have been labelled “Release Candidate 3”, if only to avoid confusion for the end user. And likewise, 1.5 should have been a new build, without said label. The two installer files even have the same MD5 hash (as reported on Slashdot)! Pure laziness on Mozilla’s part. Here’s hoping they don’t continue to make such seemingly bone-headed mistakes.
November 29th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
^ Jonah: you’re completely off base.
A release candidate is not a “release candidate” if it cannot be shipped as-is.
> So why did we call it RC3 and not just 1.5 final
That’s the definition of a release candidate.. if nothing showstopper emerges, the exact same thing is shipped.
November 29th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
DuH! Release candidates are candidates for release, unless some serious bug is found. Since there was none, it was used for the final release. Don’t get all worked up about it man.
November 29th, 2005 at 4:30 pm
Jonah, you said “Two different pieces of software should never have the same version number.” That’s not what happened here. What happened here is that one piece of software had two names.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
No, he’s right. The ridiculousness amazes me. Why “20051111” if it was finalized w/ a little bit of extra code [HEY! I was watchin’ the branch & trunk nightlies. I saw the fixes go in]? It should be 20051129. This is going to make confusion for any regressions. I don’t like this back and forth game. Call it what it is. This reminds me of that whole 0.9+ mess. Always trying to make it harder on people.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
There were no new regressions; the reason the dates are the same is because the respin (1.5 RC3) was built on the same day that 1.5 RC2 was. Now that 1.5 is out, I don’t think anyone will care, and any confusion should soon be cleared up in any case.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
I meant, god forbid, in the future. If we have to come back and back out something. And, do you also mean to tell me the fixes I saw incorporated in Trunk & Branch these last few weeks aren’t in the RC3 aka 1.5 final? B/c if we have problems in the future there’s a possibility those fixes could break something just like anything added before the 11th.
November 29th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
Hi Noah –
If slashdot reported that the MD5 hash of the installers was the same, I’d have to disagree that any extra code went in. It’d also be awfully silly. If you add more code, that’s a new release candidate.
Here’s the slashdot post
1.5 RC3 and Final are the same
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29, @04:57PM (#14141787)
If you already have Firefox 1.5 RC3 installed, don’t bother with this. It’s the exact same file, the md5 sums are even the same:
d0cbbd5d8c47fe36ee8f26fb1255838c – Firefox Setup 1.5.exe
d0cbbd5d8c47fe36ee8f26fb1255838c – Firefox Setup 1.5rc3.exe
Nearly every large scale beta follows this same pattern – I remember when XP was in beta, build 2600 was an RC long before it was released. You want to make sure nothing that was added at the end causes some weird hiccup, so you don’t mess with your final RC.
As a sidenote, I’m really excited for SVG support in this release. I’ve whipped up a quick little “SVG in Firefox” page at GlitchNYC.com if you want to see some of the cool tricks your new browser can do.
November 29th, 2005 at 8:09 pm
Noah, 1.5 RC3 (i.e 1.5) were compiled on 20051111
Whatever was checked in on the branch between then and today was probably for thunderbird.
November 29th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
What about the bug fixes, etc. that were added to the nightlies? Are we to understand that none of the changes since RC3 became available (way back on November 11, 2005) are implemented? Why not?
November 29th, 2005 at 9:48 pm
——-
Why not?
——-
Because fixes are *always* going to be *constantly* added to the branch/trunk. Unless development dies off or something.
You have to spend time testing a release candidate, and people are going to be checking in code in the meantime. Why is that hard to understand?
It’s not that complicated. At some point you need to draw the line. Sure, they could have incorporated recent changes into an RC4, but you’d have the same same exact situation. Three weeks from now, you’d be asking “why weren’t the changes after Nov 30’s RC4 included in the final version?”
::beats own head against the wall::
November 30th, 2005 at 1:30 am
The only stuff checked into the branch since RC3 has been for camino, mail or l10n, none of which affect Fx.
November 30th, 2005 at 3:26 am
Pity the bug #315509 is still there in 1.5 RC3 … errr… 1.5 … :(
Maybe it’s just 0.33% of crashes now in talkback, but in .cz domain it’s disaster – crashing on one of the top visiting sites by ordinary users (non-geeks). This will make life of some “geeks” really hard for a while, if they were installing ff to their moms/gfs/etc…
I hope some update will be out soon.
November 30th, 2005 at 4:21 am
“RC3 is Firefox 1.5”
Is this also true for localised builds? If not, you shouldn’t be saying this.
~Grauw
November 30th, 2005 at 4:36 am
[…] Lots, and lots and lots and lots of news about the new Firefox 1.5, but they all boil down to one thing…. […]
November 30th, 2005 at 4:41 am
Laurens: I don’t know, I dislike localised versions due to support reasons (unless they can be turned into english version inside menu, so both versions are available in the same installation, and answers of “go to option menu” type are valid for localised user too, as he can switch the app into english, and search for option text (option is of course trivial example)), so I don’t have any experience with those.
November 30th, 2005 at 9:36 am
at least they could fix some of bugs we mentioned on your blog, most notably
http://www.2020media.com/nav.html?hosting-ASP_net.htm
and eating memmory in other cases also…I won’t call it Final, not Final for me, I’ll stay with nighties whatever it brings, till 1.5.x will be released.
November 30th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
Laurens: About localized RC3
I’m no insider, just a regular ffx enthousiast…
As a French end-user, since RC3 EN was first published, I’ve been checking every day (ok : every other hour :-] ) the “other languages and platforms” page to see wether RC3 FR was out.
The fact is RC3 FR never came out, and I’m 99% sure no single localized RC3 neither (same page). 1.5 FR RTM just popped up yesterday amongst all RTM versions.
My guess is there where no localization-related bug fixes after RC2, since RC3 was declared RTM… Insiders, yours to tell wether or not.
And now for the “opinion” part towards the original troll ;-) :
I’m not the “your mom, your grandfather” type of user, but these kind of users don’t install release candidates, do they ?
My personal “user” feeling is that the “RC” label acually means “release candidate”, i.e. “can prove able to be the release version”.
I’m proud the software I like is issued by an organization that doesn’t fool people like others might, labelling “RC” builds that are just beta++ versions.
Mozilla : open source, open process, words that mean what they say.
Don’t change a thing, that’s perfect…
November 30th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Sage doesn’t work with Firefox 1.5 builds
November 30th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
Every change since 11-11-2005 to the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH tag off which firefox is built:
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?branch=MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH&branchtype=match&date=explicit&mindate=2005-11-07+12%3A00
Mostly what I See are a lot of camino-specific changes.
December 1st, 2005 at 12:21 am
[…] Update: 1.5 is the same as 1.5 Release Candidate 3. […]
December 1st, 2005 at 12:49 am
Hey Manoj Mehta, check out http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/buildid/nightly.html
December 1st, 2005 at 2:43 am
Any idea when 1.5.1 will be released?
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Sage worked magically after I restarted Firefox :) Sorry for the false positive.
December 3rd, 2005 at 9:58 am
any reason to run 11.11 RC3 and not, say, 3.12 FF moz-1.8 branch? I don’t like reverting back…in time :-)
December 3rd, 2005 at 10:18 am
just checked link provided by mooky, there isn’t ANY change to FF branch, say win32 FF between today and 11.11.
If that listing lists ALL the bugfixes avaiable for now, it seems developers stopped fixing FF and emphasize on Camino release…
But even FF 1.5 RC3/Final has some bugs which could be fixed, I guess its not priority for now. But how can be win32 version binary different then? Like RC3 and todays, if no win32 specific bug / change has been added ?
all in all, FF is still the browser King, wish we get version 2.0 sooner, that will be a real kick!
December 8th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
hey nestastnik; found something which maybe can be related to your memory problem: Successful exploitation causes the browser to consume a large amount of CPU and memory resources on a vulnerable system when the affected browser is started up again after an attack.
http://secunia.com/advisories/17934/ not sure if this is really related to your problem………but then again maybe it is…………especially since you never use extensions which would be the main reason for this problem as i see it…..
December 9th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I knew about this vulnerability, been posted by Secunia a few days ago…
I doubt it concern me at all, as I said earlier I allways delete whole profile directory (except bookmarks.html) so with it goes history.dat, and I do it before every unpacking of .zip files, countles of times. And memmory problem was in many many releases. Beside it I can’t be hacked ! I am a l33t useR lol :-)
December 10th, 2005 at 10:24 am
You can follow this blog links, so navigate to:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/?C=M;O=A
and choose what you want, the latest releases are at the bottom. If you want a branch build(the most stabile one), look for mozilla18:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2005-12-10-04-mozilla1.8/