Standard8’s Blog

comm-central has branched!

Further to my previous post, we’ve now branched comm-central. There are now two repositories for the comm-central applications:

• comm-central: The trunk repository containing source code for Thunderbird 3.next, SeaMonkey 2.next and Lightning 1.next.
• comm-1.9.1: The stable branch repository, based on Gecko 1.9.1, for Thunderbird 3, SeaMonkey 2, Lightning 1.0.

If you already have comm-central checked out with mozilla-1.9.1 (the default until now), you will be automatically switched to mozilla-central. The mozilla-1.9.1 repository will be archived in your directory as ‘.mozilla-1.9.1′.

Local clones of mozilla will not be affected, only the ones that point to http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.1/.

The tree rules page has been updated with the current status and requirements for checkins, please check that before checking in. The various tinderbox pages have also been updated.

Whilst we’ve branched, there are still a couple of issues that we’re resolving on buildbot and some of the builders, so the comm-central and comm-1.9.1 trees will be staying closed until tomorrow morning when we’ll have hopefully resolved the issues.

Also, comm-1.9.1 isn’t on mxr yet, we have a bug filed to get it added.

comm-central branch date set

We’ve now set a date of Thursday 22nd October for branching comm-central. This will create a releases/comm-1.9.1 repository that will become the stable branch for Thunderbird 3, SeaMonkey 2 and Sunbird/Lightning 1.0.

Bug 522211 is tracking the work on setting up the repository and the infrastructure around it.

I’ll be providing more details as we go, however do note that we’ll be setting the repository up early and I’ll be keeping it synchronised with comm-central - so please don’t push to the new one until we give the announcement after the branch.

Thunderbird 2 to Thunderbird 3 upgrade test day

Today (Thursday 15th) is a special test day. We’re having a test day where we want people with Thunderbird 2 profiles to upgrade to the Thunderbird 3 builds.

Now that we’re in the final run up to the release, we want to ensure that we have a stable upgrade system and find out any issues now so that we have a chance to fix them.

So if you have a Thunderbird 2 (or earlier) profile and want to take a peak at Thunderbird 3, come and join us - find out the full details on Ludovic’s blog.

Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 is now available

After a busy few weeks and a lot of hard work, Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 is now available for download and testing. We’ve made some big changes since the last beta, which bring together the work done over the last few betas.

Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 is the last planned beta before Thunderbird 3. We welcome your feedback to help us make Thunderbird 3 even better.

So what are the big changes? Read on…

New Search with Advanced Filtering Tools

Search results now include advanced filtering tools. You have the option to filter your results by sender, tag, attachments, people, folder, and mailing list. You can also filter your email using the timeline tool.

New Global Search field and Redesigned Mail Toolbar

The Mail Toolbar is redesigned to include the new Global Search bar. Buttons such as reply, forward, delete, junk are part of each email message. When typing in the Global Search field, Thunderbird autocompletes against your address book. You have the option of searching everywhere or filtering within folders against different parts of the email such as by subject or by sender.

New Mail Account Setup Wizard

The new Mail Account Setup Wizard matches against a database of email settings from popular mail providers so that you will only need to provide your name, email, and password to set up new mail accounts.

Smart Folders

The folder pane offers a Smart Folders mode which combines special mailboxes (e.g. Inbox) from multiple accounts together. Smart Folders is now on by default.

Help us test our last Beta

As I said above, this is our last planned beta before the final release of Thunderbird 3. Therefore we’d like as much testing as possible to make sure it is stable for our users when we release it. Please provide feedback via the normal channels. If you want to help us with more specific testing, please see the wiki page.

Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 version number added to AMO

Just a short note to Thunderbird extension developers - we’ve now added the 3.0b4 version to AMO so that you can update and publish your extensions for Thunderbird 3 Beta 4.

We are starting on the first builds of Beta 4 today - today’s nightlies will be using the same revisions of the code. We then have a period of QA testing and general preparations before we release Beta 4.

Now is a good time to give your extension a test against Beta 4. If you’re stuck with some of the changes, then we’re working on documentation - although it isn’t extensive yet we have some starters. There is a Thunderbird 3 for Developers page and a general Thunderbird extensions page both of which are growing. If we’re missing documentation and you can add it, great! If you can’t that doesn’t matter, but if have suggestions for more where we’re missing items please either add them to the appropriate talk page or contact Jen.

Busy day: Faceted Global Search lands, Thunderbird string freeze for beta 4, test day….

Busy day for Thunderbird today. Yesterday and overnight we landed several big changes:

• Faceted Global Search for Thunderbird.
• Enabled the global indexer by default.
• Set the new auto configuration wizard for email accounts to be the default wizard.

Now we’ve entered our string freeze and we’ve got a few more blockers to land before code freeze.

So we’re have a big test day to test out these changes and get your feedback before Beta 4, starting now! Please do come and join us and help us make Thunderbird 3 even better. More details here.

Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 freezes over the next week

Here is a reminder of what is happening for the Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 freezes.

Definition of Thunderbird affecting patch: a patch to comm-central that affects mailnews/, mail/ or other code that Thunderbird uses. This does not include test-only patches.

Reminder SeaMonkey is in lock down for its 2.0 release.

Monday 7th September 23:59 PDT - Slushy Code Freeze

Thunderbird affecting patches will either be for a blocking-thunderbird3+ or require explicit approval from one of the Thunderbird drivers.

Test-only code is not included in this restriction.

Wednesday 9th September 23:59 PDT - Firm String Freeze

Strings in mail/ will be frozen and may not be changed prior to beta 4.

Friday 11th September 23:59 PDT - Firm Code Freeze

No patches that affect Thunderbird can land in comm-central unless given explicit approval from myself.

Post Freezes

We expect to start generating TB 3 beta 4 builds on Tuesday 15th assuming no issues are found during the weekend. As a result we may completely close comm-central for a time on Tuesday to allow stability whilst we are tagging builds.

Once we have tagged and started builds we’ll re-open comm-central for work towards rc1 (more on that later).

Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 Schedule

We’ve now agreed the freeze schedule for Thunderbird 3 Beta 4:

• Slushy Code Freeze: Monday 7th Sept 23:59 PDT.
• Full String Freeze: Wed 9th Sept 23:59 PDT.
• Code Freeze: Friday 11th Sept 23:59 PDT.
• l10n-mozilla-1.9.1 Freeze date: Monday 14th Sept 23:59 PDT.

We’ve got a lot to do before the release and before the final release. Here are just a few ways you can help us get there faster and help make Thunderbird 3 even better:

Coding

We’ve still got a lot of blockers in the list, some of them are currently un-owned (assignee is nobody@mozilla.org). If you wish to write a patch for a bug please do so, if you haven’t got privileges to assign the bug to yourself, please comment on the bug so we know you’re working on it. If you stop working on the bug, please reassign to the default owner so that we and others know.

QA

If you can, help out with bug triage, writing test cases and test days. See the QA page for more information.

Documentation

We want to improve our documentation - especially for extension developers (but for ourselves as well), see Jen’s blog for how to help.

Getting Thunderbird 3 out the door

Last week some of the Thunderbird drivers got together and had a discussion about Thunderbird 3 and the possibilities for future versions.

Up until now we’ve been very focussed on the features that we want to get into Thunderbird 3. We have realised that this is now becoming the wrong approach - Thunderbird 2 was released a long time ago - based on the Gecko 1.8.1 code base (we’re now on Gecko 1.9.1). We know from feedback that the Thunderbird 3 builds are much more stable and improved over the Thunderbird 2 builds - it is now time to get Thunderbird 3 to users.

Therefore we are looking at shipping Thunderbird 3 as soon as possible. This will mean that we won’t have time to fit everything into Thunderbird 3 that we would like to get in. What we have decided do is to release Thunderbird 3 and then look to have another version in a short period of time following that. The important items that don’t make Thunderbird 3 will be high priority for Thunderbird 3.next.

For the blocking lists, this means we’re currently reducing the size of the list by about half - some of the bugs have already been updated and we are working on the rest.

For future Thunderbird development, we are moving to a more agile development process. We need to move to development cycles with shorter iterations to encourage faster evolution of the user experience, as well as to alleviate pressure to land features before they’re ready. As part of this we will be experimenting with new features/development via extensions and then landing in the extensions within the main Thunderbird code base. This has a couple of advantages - we can ship versions of Thunderbird without being dependent on the state of partially completed features, and by using extensions we’ll know the extension points are available for extensions developers to use.

Automated MozMill tests for Thunderbird

Following on from getting the make mozmill harness working last week, we’ve now got a Tinderbox up and running with MozMill:

As the mozmill make target acts in a similar style and produces similar output to xpcshell-tests getting a tinderbox set up was relatively easy. The basic order of events was: MozillaBuild upgrade to 1.4, installation of MozMill with one minor patch, patch the buildbotcustom code to provide a mozmill test in the unit test factory.

For now we’ve just installed MozMill manually, and this box is just one box running on the ThunderbirdTest tree. We still have to work out how we’re going to deploy MozMill normally, we’re watching the discussion in bug 457265 to see what is going to happen there. In the meantime we’re leaving the tinderbox running to see how stable the tests are.

Even though the box has just been set up as a “see how it goes” box, it has already caught its first regression . About 5 hours after we first got the tests passing, a patch was checked into comm-central that worked fine on our Thunderbird 3/Gecko 1.9.1 build but regressed the trunk builds (built on Gecko 1.9.2). We’re pretty sure this is due to the recent focus changes in 1.9.2 - the hack we’ve put in for 1.9.1 shouldn’t be necessary on 1.9.2 (we’re currently checking that assertion out).

If we didn’t have the box we could have gone for a month or so before finding out about the regression - now we know when and why it happened which will make fixing it a lot easier.

The MozMill harness is currently Thunderbird specific - we did this so that we could get MozMill up and running quickly with short iterations as Thunderbird doesn’t have other UI test harnesses available. If anyone wants to make the harness work with other comm-central apps and/or move it over to mozilla-central then I would be more that happy to discuss ways of making that happen, I’m just not likely to have time to do the work until after Thunderbird 3 is out.