The Changing of the Guard

04/29/2008

Almost four weeks ago now1, dbaron took some time and separated out the various guts of the old Mozilla tools module, and divvied the contents of the directory2 into two new Mozilla modules: a Build & Release Tools module and a Code Analysis and Debugging Tools module.
I wanted to call this change out, because I think it’s a step in the right direction, for a lot of reasons; both of these new modules have seen a lot more activity in the last 2-3 years and I think it really helps to separate them out from a code management standpoint, but also from the standpoint of the way we think about these sets of tools: the guts of any organization’s build/release infrastructure and analysis/debugging tools should be first-rate citizens, and this change helps to frame the way those parts of the code are thought about.
So, thank you, dbaron; it’s been a long time coming, and I appreciate you taking the time to sort that goop of code all out into [more] logical units.

***

A couple of days after the announcement, I brought up the fact that with Rob Helmer’s announcement, the Build & Release module would not have anyone at Mozilla Corporation who could offer reviews for the module, given that rhelmer, Chase and myself were listed as the owners, and there weren’t any peers yet.
This obviously makes little-to-no sense.
After a lively discussion about how to best remedy that, I also wanted to note that long-time Mozilla community member Nick Thomas3 is the new module owner for the Build/Release Tools module, with Chase, Rob Helmer, and myself staying around as peers.
Coop was also added as a module peer, whose omission was, let’s face it, somewhat ludicrous4. I’m happy to see that got corrected as well.
Congratulations, Nick; you follow a long line of Mozilla Build Engineers, and I know you’re going to [continue to] hit it out of the ballpark.
Let me know where to send the bottle of scotch.
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1 Wow… on my birthday, no less! What a present! :-)
2 which had mostly become an “island of misfit code
3 also known as the “Build Engineer Formerly Known as CF”
4 No one escapes Mozilla Build/Release, Coop. No one. ;-)