The roads I take...

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 21/2008 (May 19 - 25, 2008):

• Automated Testing:
  We got the hardware set up for the Mac buildbot slave, but I still need to figure out how to log in and get the software up and running.
  While I'm on the topic of testing, there has been some talk about turning off the TUnit tests on the Linux tinderbox, which should improve the machine's cycle time. The buildbot machines have taken over this job and their output is also better - so if you have any objection, please tell me soon or I'll take TUnit off that box.
• Preference Migration:
  More review and discussion about the advanced pref panel. It looks like the JVM switching stuff has only worked on Unix/Linux, but requires names of the paths that are not common any more, so it has been broken for a while on common systems (JVM devs probably knew better, but I'm not sure anyone else did). It seems like this feature should be extension fodder, and I'll get all the reviews for killing it.
  I also hope that other people are starting to work on the remaining pref panels left active in the old window, as we want to kill the old window finally for alpha.
• Windows Development Tools:
  I checked in Serge Gautherie's patch for enabling Windows source server support, if you want to try it, please do, and tell me if it works because I have no clue, being Linux-only on the development side of things.
• Version Control and SeaMonkey Development:
  As there has been talk of opening the mozilla-central repository on Mercurial (hg) and continuing trunk (1.9.1.x) development there, leaving cvs HEAD for the stable 1.9.0.x series once FF3 is out, it's time for SeaMonkey and Thunderbird to think about how to host development code in the future.
  We want want to base our next releases on 1.9.1.x for various reasons, so we need to figure out how to place our code in separate hg repositories and pull those together into a tree we can build. We probably all knew this point in time will come, though I guess many of us hoped to concentrate on Thunderbird 3 and SeaMonkey 2 before figuring this out.
  Figuring out where to place code affects everything not in mozilla-central today, including most suite-specific, shared mailnews and included extensions code, with at least the notable exception of Composer stuff that somehow got imported into mozilla-central. This might not be trivial, given that we might want to share a repository with e.g. Thunderbird, and given that even our own code is spread across multiple top-level directories at the moment. I'd like to figure that out at least in a testing setup, but any help is appreciated.
• SeaMonkey Status Meetings:
  I'd like to get the SeaMonkey together in some kind of status update regularly, ideally in a weekly manner, so that all of us know better what's progressing and what needs to be done. This could be via a phone meeting, an IRC meeting, or even just updating a wiki status page to be ready by some deadline (a wiki summary should be done for the other meeting types as well).
  If you want to participate and have some preferences for the type and timing of such status updates, please let me know.
• Various Discussions:
  Session (re)store, Thunderbird/mailnews development, 1.9.0 vs. 1.9.1, L10n and hg, Firefox Plus Summit, etc.

I finally got my invitation for the "Firefox Plus" Summit this summer without losing it via the Junk mail mechanism (my Bayes filter seems to be trained to consider it as spam), and I registered successfully, so I'm pretty sure now I'll attend this come together. As a project coordinator, I probably have several different interests there, I hope I don't need to weigh build&release, mailnews, and other talks too heavily against each other, but it's possible that I'll have to in some way. If you have any topic you want to talk to me about, please tell me, I'll be there and try to communicate with as many people as possible.
That said, my main focus (even on an event with the Firefox brand) is of course SeaMonkey, and I'll try to make as many talks/topics as possible that help our project and can bring us forward in some way.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 20/2008 (May 12 - 18, 2008):

• Automated Testing:
  The automated testing machines are green on Linux and Windows and reporting to the main SeaMonkey waterfall page. It's now required to not break them for checking in SeaMonkey patches.
  A Mac buildbot slave is in the works.
• Preference Migration:
  Still waiting for reviews for the advanced pref panel.
  When I realized that unfortunately people need about:config every now and then and Thunderbird has an option to call it but we don't, I realized we could add a button for it to the advanced panel and filed a bug for this.
• Linuxwochen Wien:
  As mentioned in my previous blog post, I spent some time at the local free and open source software event called "Linuxwochen", promoting Mozilla and SeaMonkey at least in the local community - and I hope to spread the word and get connected with this community further in the future.
• Various Discussions:
  AMO integration in SeaMonkey (it has landed!), session (re)store, Thunderbird/mailnews development, next bug triage targets, 1.9.0 vs. 19.1. for next Thunderbird and SeaMonkey releases, hg move, etc.

Sorry for the really long delay of this status update, the last week or so has been a bit of a crazy time for me privately, but I hope to come around to more actual work again. Stay tuned!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 19/2008 (May 5 - 11, 2008):

• Automated Testing:
  The work on getting our machines pass all tests went on this week, with some success I might say. People are also looking into getting a Mac machine added to our automated testing stack.
  Andrew's patch for mochitest focus problems did go in, making all tests pass on Linux. The remaining Windows problems could really be tracked to a small window size, and I could fix them with a dynamic default window size for our browser window.
  With this, we are finally passing all existing automated tests and can display those machines on our primary tinderbox waterfall, making failures block development.
• Preference Migration:
  The JVM-switch-less advanced pref panel might make it now, some reviews are still pening.
  Application preferences help needs even more work though.
• nsSuiteGlue Cleanup:
  The issue mentioned last week about not removing observers is solved with my checkin to the bug.
• German L10n:
  I once again kept SeaMonkey L10n complete on trunk, remaining orange is for a excess string due to a patch removed temporarily for the Thunderbird alpha, but this should go back soon and we'll visually go green again.
• Various Discussions:
  Reviews and automated tests, kill-wallet, session (re)store, Thunderbird/mailnews development, www.mozilla.org planning, MoFo ED Search, etc.

The renewed Thunderbird effort, now driven by Mozilla Messaging has beaten us in providing a first Alpha based on Mozilla 1.9 code, mainly due to SeaMonkey still being blocked by switching download and password manager to new implementations as well as finishing the preference migration (all of which are being worked on now). Congratulations to getting this testing preview release out the door!
The good thing for us there is that they have been test-driving the automated release generation harness for a non-Firefox product the first time, and we would also like to use those automation processes for 2.x, so we now can ask them how to do it.
Still, they have not released any localizations for this Alpha and don't care about automated updates from it to newer versions, while we would like to have both of those in place for our alpha. I hope this will work well and that we'll be nearing the point in time soon where we can get our new code into the public for more testing than now with just nightlies.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 18/2008 (April 28 - May 4, 2008):

• Automated Testing:
  As noted earlier on this blog, I worked quite a lot on getting automated testing running for SeaMonkey, as I finally got access to the VMs that were created for this (thanks to Mozilla IT and build people!).
  I also made broswer-chrome test pass once the machines themselves were up and running and patched them so they test-run Andrew's patch for mochitest focus problems, which made all tests pass on Linux (Windows has a few remaining problems, possibly due to a small window size).
• Preference Migration:
  I checked in the migration of ChatZilla integration to the SeaMonkey prefwindow so that those options are available in the new window now as well.
  Additionally, I worked on a new iteration of the advanced panel patch, eliminating the old JVM switch cruft.
  Finally on this topic, I also did a new patch for application preferences help, addressing the open review comments.
• L10n-friendlier "Close" accesskey:
  When investigating a duplicate accesskeys in German, I found out that "Close" and "Close Tab" in the SeaMonkey browser window were reusing the same accesskey defined for "Close" elsewhere, which is a nightmare for localizers finding out what accesskeys to use where. I filed a bug for that and finally fixed it.
• nsSuiteGlue Cleanup:
  As in the case of fixing sanitizer tests I added myself for automated testing, I worked on a second fix this week to a bug I introduced myself:
  When someone else asked my about nsSuiteGlue observers and I looked at the code again, it struck me that we never actually did a call to remove observers and I created a patch for fixing this by porting a few lines I accidentally deleted when porting this from Firefox.
  (As a side note, this was because that "someone", being Misak Khachatryan, is now working on session restore for SeaMonkey!)
• kill-xpfe:
  When Camino people obsoleted a few more xpfe components in their bug to move away from xpfe, I did cvs removals of those parts of code. Another part of xpfe is history.
  (Some people may notice an inflation of "kill-*" names in my project language, I've adopted the style invented in mailnews with "kill-mork" and "kill-rdf" and started using it for "kill-wallet", "kill-winhooks" and now even "kill-xpfe" )
• German L10n:
  I kept SeaMonkey L10n complete on trunk, even though it remains orange for some excess strings (the reporter ones may get killed in a mass-removal for all localizations, the mailnews one might come back soon as that patch got removed temporarily for the Thunderbird alpha).
• Various Discussions:
  Download manager, password manager, AMO and SeaMonkey themes, session (re)store, places backends, Thunderbird/mailnews development, addressbook improvements, etc.

There has been some talk about what policy to follow for SeaMonkey patches with respect to automated testing, now that we have the frameworks running on dedicated machines. Though it's not a firm decision yet, it seems like the best way is for reviewers to require tests for r+ where they are feasible (reviewers should be able to decide that). I'd like to encourage everyone to write tests where it's possible to test their work automatically right from the beginning, and only only per request of reviewers, though. And I'd like to urge reviewers ti require tests from patch writers where they are possible. We have the infrastructure now, let's really use it!