Nightly/Tinderbox build names confusion - glossary needed?

B2G OS Documentation
#1

Hi all,
So I’m trying to understand what still exists for B2G, what’s useful to me, what’s not. The B2G nightly builds folder is confusing me:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/b2g/nightly/
Why is the a 2015 subdirectory, but then 3 months of builds in directories off this main one… even though they’re not the latest because there is a 2016 subdirectory.

Why don’t the nightly builds continue until the B2G project transition was completed? Wasn’t this September 2016?

Are any of these builds stable releases? Beta releases? What codenames are used for stability?

Some names I think I understand.

Emulator, Flame, Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 are all pretty self explanatory. What’s Dolphin?

-eng is an engineering build, -debug is a debugging build.

-b2gnn where nn=Gecko version?

OS version numbers are vx_y, but why are some suffix “r” and others not?

-k is Android Kitkat, -l is Lollipop.

What’s the difference between a build with -[device] and one that has no suffix?

What’s the difference between mozilla-central and mozilla-b2g…etc?

-ota means over-the-air update I assume, but I’ve no idea if this is usable.

What are all these trees? Ash, Larch, Maple and Oak? There’s also Graphene and Horizon hidden in various places.

The tinderbox builds section (named for tinderbox because it’s full of wood, because of all the tree codenames?)
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/b2g/tinderbox-builds/
contains Alder, Cedar, Cypress, Gun, Jamun, Pine… and some animals! Panda!

Then there’s Inbound, Beta, Unagi, Otoro, Aurora, FX team…

Can anyone help me understand please?

Thanks :slight_smile:

#2

I think I can answer some of my own questions:

  1. Deleted because I realised I didn’t understand :wink:

  2. -b2gnn vx_y are builds based on specific releases of Gecko (and maybe Gaia), so these are stable; mozilla-central builds are nightly

  3. Dolphin was a device using Spreadtrum SoC, I’ve no idea what it’s real name was or if it was ever released.

  4. I assume builds with no suffix -[device] are base builds, no device specific code

  5. All the tree names are projects, probably experimental branches. https://hg.mozilla.org/projects
    These tree name are recycled. https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseEngineering/DisposableProjectRepositories
    These probably are very internal to Mozilla development process and probably not useful to anyone outside.

  6. Tinderbox is a continuous integration tool, so these builds are the results of this tool. Again, internal to Mozilla development process.

  7. Panda possibly relates to the Pandaboard. Unagi and Otoro are other devices codenames.

  8. Aurora was between beta and nightly, but stopped earlier this year.

  9. Beta is beta; almost stable.

  10. Inbound and fx-team are integration related - patches are tested here. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Mercurial

I still don’t understand suffix “r”, but this is only for the 2_2 release and I think it’s related to the Gecko build release name: https://hg.mozilla.org/releases
Other Gecko releases have other suffixes.
I’ve no idea what this signifies, maybe minor updates to fix bugs.

I also don’t understand why nightly builds don’t continue until September 2016. I wonder if this is because they moved to the Smart TV project so are stored somewhere else on Mozilla FTP that I haven’t found yet.

I’ve probably not fully understood most of the above, but I feel like I don’t need to ask anymore. I hope my brief summary is helpful to other inquisitive folk like me :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Will