Weekly Status Report, W23/2009

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 23/2009 (June 1 - 7, 2009):

• SeaMonkey Build Machines:
  Updated the L10n repack factory abstraction patch for a syntax error, and while I was there, filed a bug and patch for moving comm-central repack factories into buildbotcustom.
  I also filed a bug for seabld hg access, which is a prerequisite for release automation, but didn't come around to actual work towards that goal.
• Release Process:
  As Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 is upcoming, I started the SeaMonkey 1.1.17 release process the same day the Gecko release branch was cut for those versions. People are encouraged to test the candidate builds. This release will contain a good number of security fixes compared to 1.1.16.
• Download Manager:
  I obviously missed that reusing toolkit icons works badly if they use differently arranged images for different platforms, so I needed to fix missing download icons on Mac and made us safer against toolkit changes in the process.
• Fishcam:
  Our famous Ctrl+Alt+F "easter egg" displaying the Amazing Fishcam website has been throwing up warnings for some time about that key combination potentially not being available on all platforms. When I read a discussion about a similar problem in Firebug, I also found a possibility to suppress the key warning, which I implemented. This is no important function, it's a fun thing, so we just don't care if there's some systems out there where the OS uses the key combination otherwise and it doesn't call the fishcam.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  As I didn't come around to land the necessary string changes for German this week, I could test with its L10n builds that "L10n merge" is indeed working on the new "comm-1.9.1" buildbots: If some strings are missing, the L10n repackaging system inserts the original en-US strings and the localized nightlies end up actually working! Thanks to Axel for figuring out all the hard work, I just needed to turn this on.
• Various Discussions:
  Target milestones in the SeaMonkey Bugzilla product, waiting for Parallels fix, comm-central commit access, sr policy, Fennec L10n, ISP info for account autoconfig, Firefox 3.5 nearing finish line, etc.

While tabbed mail for SeaMonkey is getting reviewed slowly but surely, the Thunderbird guys are working on a lot of internal reworks and code improvements in their UI code (e.g. included in the easy mail search work), and I strongly believe that we should get those applied to SeaMonkey code as well as those built a good basis for future improvements on the UI as well as make it easier to port Thunderbird work to SeaMonkey and our work back to their product. This is nice stuff to work on for someone who doesn't know our code that well yet, as most is just applying their patches on our side and refining that following review comments. Some work for you to pick up?