Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Changes to development builds · 2011-01-08 13:03 by Wladimir Palant
Now that we need to produce development builds for Chrome the old Perl script generating development builds was getting somewhat too inflexible. It has been rewritten in Python and now I finished hooking up the new script. While it is still not generating Chrome builds (something to add early next week), there are already some changes for Firefox builds.
More frequent builds
Originally I wanted to have more frequent builds for Chrome only because it updates extensions automatically in background, without bothering the user. After thinking about it, more frequent builds for Firefox won’t do any harm either: Firefox will only check for updates once a day so you won’t get more update notifications than you had before. However, now if I fix an issue it takes at most 30 minutes until a development build with the fix is available — you can check for updates manually and it will be there. Up to 50 old development builds will be kept (previously we were only keeping 10).
Different build numbers
With potentially many development builds per day the old build numbers referencing the build date are no longer going to work. So now the last part of the development build version will the repository revision (e.g. currently 2695 for Adblock Plus). The side-effect: the build numbers will actually correspond with the revisions listed in the changelog.
Longer changelogs
There will be more people skipping a few development builds now so I decided that changlogs shouldn’t be limited to the changes after the previous build. Instead the changelog will be listing 50 most recent changes — this makes it easier to catch up if you didn’t check the changelog a bunch of times.
Better development build listings
The development build listing pages (like the one for Adblock Plus) were relying on the webserver’s default directory listing mechanism. The new script is now generating custom pages instead. While these don’t look too different, they will list the newest build first and highlight it. And they are aware of the order of version numbers so 1.3rc will recognized as older than 1.3.5a.
Comment [3]
Commenting is closed for this article.
BUGabundo · 2011-01-09 02:20 · #
the listing for chrome is in reverse order, older to newer. still there’s a latest.crx there :)
https://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/adblockpluschrome/
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
As I mentioned, the Chrome development builds are not being produced by that script yet.
yamaban · 2011-01-10 10:52 · #
In the mentioned page, in the section:
“How do I install/update development builds?”
is still the following: (cite)
“Usually you only need to click 00latest.xpi/00latest.crx and accept installation;”
This should be changed to reflect the new situation.
Non the less, you do a great work for us all, which makes daily browsing not only much more safe, but also less distracting.
Thanks very much.
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
Yes, I didn’t update this page yet, going to do it soon.
Andrew · 2011-01-14 01:32 · #
Removing adverts from someone elses website is theft. YOu are stealing revenue. It’s also illegal in the UK:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
I don’t mind you voicing your opinion in my blog – but maybe commenting on one semi-related blog post is enough? Sorry, removing your comment from this post, it is totally off topic here.