Google Chrome Dev Slows to Fix Bugs Code Yellow Alert Issued for Chrome Browser Sean Michael Kerner
From the 'Rapid Release Cycles' files:
Since its first release a year ago, Google's Chrome browser has been updated at a rapid pace — perhaps too rapid.
This week, Chrome developer Anthony Laforge issued a 'Code Yellow' alert and put all Chrome developer releases on hold, until some high priority bugs could be fixed.
The problem was the number of un-touched P0 bugs that were in Google Chrome bug tracking system. A P0 is supposed to be the highest priority bug and could considered serious enough to be a release blocker. According to Laforge, 10 bugs were labeled as P0 that had not been worked on by developers in over five days.
After issuing the Code Yellow, further examination revealed that in fact many of the P0's were in fact mis-categorized. As such, Google developers have demoted many of them to a P1 status.
In a follow-up message to his Code Yellow alert Laforge wrote on a Google mailing list:
"Since all of the open issues have owners and are all actively being worked on I'm lifting the code yellow status," Laforge wrote. "The embargo on the dev channel for this week will also be released as soon as the remaining issues are resolved."
In my view, the risk of super-agile development is that key bugs can get overlooked, which is why prioritization is so important.
This Code Yellow incident might just be an isolated case or it could potentially be indicative of some larger code quality concerns within Google. In any event the fact that it was recognized and is being dealt with is a good thing.
Overall, though, Google Chrome itself is getting slower, for other reasons.
Extensions for Chrome actually slow down Chrome's performance. It's something that Google developers recognize and are now working on. Extensions are currently in the dev-channel build of Chrome and not yet fit for broad consumption, but the plan is to move them into the beta builds soon.
Google has pitched Chrome on the merits of its speed since day one. It'll be interesting to see as time goes on how many trade-offs (if any) need to be made to continue to make both the browser and browser releases themselves faster than before.
