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Ok, so I'm a total Mozilla Firefox bleeding edge builds fanboy. This is mostly a very smooth and rewarding experience but at times have found myself rebuilding over and over again to get back to where I was.  There are mostly three types of builds:

- Released
- Beta
- Nightly/Trunk

Released is just that, stuff that been released, while beta is just about to be released and need some testing love.  Nightly builds are for the strong of will, who know to expect great new features and possibly disastrous pitfalls.

Before proceeding make sure you have your whole profile backed up either via MozBackup or similar, if you don't tread lightly or abandon these efforts...

There are three ways you can test these builds:

1) Tweak: Manually change the type of build you want as you main instance.
-To change your build type open the type about:config in the link location bar and press enter to open the advanced configuration screen. (heed the warning)
- filter or search for "app.update.channel"
- double-click that entry and enter either: release, beta or nightly as a value. (via)
- then from the Help menu do a Check for Updates (restart Firefox if nothing happens)

(Optionally: you can change your build type manually just open the "channel-prefs.js" file from the defaults\pref directory under you main installation of Firefox.)

2) Extension: Use the Update Channel Selector extension
- install this extension
- restart Firefox
- then from the Help menu do a Check for Updates (restart Firefox if nothing happens)

3) Separate Download: Download and run a separate build without changing your main instance.  This option is best when you want to go back to a reliable build.
- Just visit the Firefox Builds forum, select the build(s) you want by downloading the zip files and extract accordingly.
- To run a multple separate instances of Firefox against different profile us the no-remote commandline option and profile like this:
firefox -p my_profile_1 -no-remote
- To create/manage profiles just load up the Profile Manager
firefox -profilemanager -no-remote

Here's a breakdown of Gecko build versions as they compare to the Firefox version number and the internal development name.  The latest bleeding edge version is appropriately called "Minefield"...

"The part that you want to note is the Gecko revision number (rv) and the Firefox version string. These correspond to which build you are using. It works something like this:

rv:1.7.x and Firefox 1.0.x = Gecko 1.7 (Firefox 1.0) Branch.
rv:1.8.0.x and Firefox (or Deer Park) 1.5.0.x = Gecko 1.8.0 (Firefox 1.5) Branch.
rv:1.8.1.x and Firefox (or Bon Echo) 2.0.0.x = Gecko 1.8.1 (Firefox 2) Branch.
rv:1.9.0.x and Firefox (or Gran Paradiso) 3.0.x = Gecko 1.9.0 (Firefox 3.0) Branch.
rv:1.9.1.x and Firefox (or Shiroteko) 3.5.x = Gecko 1.9.1 (Firefox 3.5) Branch.
rv:1.9.2a1pre and Firefox (or Namoroka) 3.6a1pre and on = Gecko 1.9.2 Trunk (towards Firefox 3.6)
rv:1.9.3a1pre and Firefox (or Minefield) 3.7a1pre and on = Gecko 1.9.3 Trunk (towards Firefox 3.7/4.0)

« Last Edit: December 29, 2009, 05:39:48 PM by mrtech »

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August 02, 2009, 07:48:35 PM