Fennec – Nightly Maemo Updates

Desktop versions of Firefox have nightly update channels. New versions are automatically downloaded and available for install as they become available. Each morning, a Firefox user can quickly and easily update to the newest nightly version.

Thanks to the release engineering team, the same easy nightly updates are available for Firefox on Maemo.

Aki Sasaki has provided some simple instructions for getting nightly updates installed on your Maemo device:

1. Go to the nightly repository. The repository is basically a large file server with folders for each combination of source code branch and language localization.
2. Choose the branch you want (trunk == mozilla-central / 1.9.2 == mozilla-1.9.2). Fennec 1.0 is being released from the Mozilla 1.9.2 source code branch, so you probably want to use “1.9.2_*” branch.
3. Choose the locale you want. You probably want the multi-locale bundle (“*_multi”), but you can choose a different one.
4. Click on the “*_nightly.install” file in the appropriate repository. This should automatically start the Application Manager on your Maemo device and Firefox for Maemo will be installed.

Once installed, the Application Manager should notify you when a new version of the nightly is available and allow you to update Firefox. This process is a little different than desktop Firefox, where the update mechanism is built into the application. However, it fits in better with the Maemo platform.

When we have release packages in those repositories, there will be a second .install file (with no “_nightly” in the name) that points to the release section rather than the extras section. But if you install that, you won’t get nightly updates for those.

We also have plans for a simple web page front-end to the repository. The web page will have nice human-readable descriptions instead of cryptic filenames 🙂