Deployment

"Deployment" for Firefox means shipping releases: building, packaging, signing, distributing, and updating the application across hundreds of platforms × architectures × locales × channels.

Release channels

Channel	Cadence	Audience
Nightly	Daily	Developers and adventurous users
Beta	~6 weeks	Pre-release testing
Release	~4 weeks	General audience
ESR (Extended Support Release)	~12 months	Enterprises and Tor Browser

Each channel is a separate branch in the Mozilla repos (mozilla-central, mozilla-beta, mozilla-release, mozilla-esrXXX).

Build matrix

For each promoted commit on Beta/Release/ESR:

• Linux x86, x86_64, aarch64
• macOS x86_64, aarch64
• Windows x86, x86_64, aarch64
• Android armv7, aarch64, x86_64

Each platform × ~100 locales = thousands of artifacts per release.

CI: TaskCluster

taskcluster/ generates the entire CI graph from YAML kinds. Major task kinds:

• build — compile per platform/variant.
• test — run mochitest, xpcshell, web-platform-tests, talos, raptor.
• l10n — locale repacks.
• nightly, beta-promotion, release-promotion — channel promotions.
• partner-repack — special builds for Mozilla partners.

The decision task on each push reads the kinds, expands them, and submits to TaskCluster.

Update infrastructure

The AUS (Application Update Service) at aus5.mozilla.org serves MAR (Mozilla ARchive) files. The Firefox client periodically polls AUS for its (version, build ID, channel, OS) and applies the response. See features/updater.md and docs/update-infrastructure/.

Signing

Releases are signed:

• macOS: Apple Developer ID code-signing + notarization.
• Windows: Authenticode signature.
• Linux: GPG signatures on the tarball; some distros add their own signing.
• Android: Play Store signing keys.

MAR updater signatures are checked in-process before applying.

Branding and partner builds

browser/branding/, browser/themes/, and configurable build options support partner repacks (Yandex, Baidu, etc.) and channel branding (Nightly, Aurora-style).

Mozharness

testing/mozharness/ is the orchestration framework that wraps each TaskCluster task. It reads task config, sets up the environment, runs the tool (build / test / lint), and uploads artifacts.

Related

• Build system
• Tooling
• Update system