Weekly Status Report, W05/2010

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 05/2010 (February 1 - 7, 2010):

• Releases:
  I prepared SeaMonkey 2.0.3 builds, which are now available on FTP as well as the beta update channel for testing by our community, offering well over 100 bug fixes. If things go well, we should be able to release this update in sync with Firefox 3.5.8 on February 16th.
  The 2.0.x nightlies now carry a 2.0.4pre version number, but we have no firm schedule for the following updates yet (will coordinate with Firefox, possibly also Thunderbird drivers on that).
  Work on 2.0.3 also included putting up a first version of the release notes.
  I also tried to let the release process generate 64bit builds for Linux this time, those are fully experimental and will only appear as "contributed" builds though, they have no official status at all.
• Build Infrastructure:
  The move of our core buildbot master code to a shared location could be completed, Thunderbird will look into using the same code in the future and we closely mirror the Firefox setup now, making it easier for people patching their side to fix ours as well (and the other way round).
  Revision reporting on packaged tests is now both generic and respecting applications that are built from different repositories as the platform (like SeaMonkey or Thunderbird).
  Additionally, I continued working with Mozilla teams to get SeaMonkey data up on the graph server, which needed a firewall rule and a correction on the staging server's database, but testing looks good now and we should be able to go live on the real server soon.
• Download Progress Windows:
  I created screen shots of some additional proposals for improving the progress windows, requested ui-review on them to see which one wins out with our "UI tsar", and finally implemented the winning proposal in a patch, which should be very close to positive review by now.
• Build System, Packaging:
  After a few runs on the Mozilla Messaging try server, I could finalize the patch for merging our package manifests and also make Mac use a manifest, get reviews and check it in.
  Another patch I worked on is about making branding usage fit Mozilla standards more closely, which should also ease the life of people wanting to ship suite versions with a different branding than the official "SeaMonkey" trademark designs.
  Some discussions about build system variables reminded me that I should re-test and attach the papering-over patch for mailnews Qt port bustage which I've had locally for quite some time now.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  Starting with SeaMonkey 2.0.3, the language packs are marked compatible with all 2.0.* versions.
  Also with this release, Japanese is joining the collection of officially available localizations.
  This was also the first time I played with and used the new L10n sign-off dashboard for a release - further opt-ins / sign-offs for SeaMonkey 2.0.x will all run through this tool now. See the m.d.l10n thread for more details on using this tool.
• Various Discussions:
  2.1 planning discussions, Alpha 1 and further steps for 1.9.3, Gecko 1.8.1.24 and SeaMonkey 1.x EOL, KompoZer integration work, new machines, FOSDEM, places history changes, module ownership, mozilla.org planning and "Mozilla" vs. "Firefox" websites, EOL for Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" on 1.9.3, langpacks and switching, etc.

I may not have posted a lot of Mozilla-related blog posts this week, but I got around to do quite some actual work. I wondered for a bit if I should post separately about the progress window work, but the ignorance of hard work I have been and am putting into those tiny windows as well as the vitriol from people who can't stand designs being modernized made me decide not to mention this work much. I know that it needed my work to even have progress windows at all in SeaMonkey 2.0 and I'm convinced that my current proposals and work can fix some of the shortcomings I had already know when doing the initial work and that were criticized by users, but a number of those users seem convinced that our team (especially myself) is not caring about what they say at all, so I don't feel like taking their dreams away. And the attempt of humor in the title of my post about the initial work was not well-received as well. In any case, I feel an obligation to improve work I started, but discussions with those users have taken any fun out of working on this part of the code. Maybe my rare tries of actually doing some coding should stay that rare or even stop completely. It's not like I wouldnj't have enough other work on my TODO list.