Weekly Status Report, W35/2010

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 35/2010 (August 30 - September 5, 2010):

• Build Machines:
  I fixed the missing L10n nightlies by applying a trick the Firefox build engineers team told me about - all locales that build right now should have nightlies out for all platforms again.
  When I noticed that two machines were missing, I filed a bug and IT promptly got them back to work for us - thanks for that!
• Automated tests:
  While a few other people in our team are churning along to reduce our test failures, I only helped marginally with this effort this week - but when one fix landed and didn't have the wanted effect, I investigated that a bit, wrote a test specifically for the new issue we're seeing and found out what the actual problem there is - we're still discussing a solution.
  I did create a patch to only build Web Console for Firefox, which should make our test failures there go away - if it gets accepted.
• Places:
  I did one more patch for cleaning up the places library, reverting theming for some parts to ease getting it reviewed.
  The fast bookmarking button got some more review comments and finally got as far as being OKed for the Classic theme, so I updated it for mac and Modern as well. The star button nit backport got review, I requested approval to land.
  The Mac problem of bookmarks being broken when no windows are open is solved after some more teamwork between Stefan and me.
• Doorhanger notifications:
  While the main patch is still waiting for review, I updated the followup on add-on installation notifications following some more Firefox work. I also filed a bug for "Learn more" on geolocation notifications, but I won't work on it while the rest is still in limbo.
• UA string:
  I did a patch for the somewhat controversial change of including a Firefox token by default in our UA string, after I realized the fight for this has been lost. There will be a UI pref in the advanced panels, and some don't believe this fight is over and want to prolong needless fighting, but I think this change needs to be done and the discussion ended if we don't want to continue losing users over this.
• Data Manager:
  From what I can see, the updates to the Data Manager patch and the review comments seem to get very close to final with respect to Neil's super-review. Now all I'm waiting for is the official marking of that and Ian's actual review.
• Site-specific zoom:
  I updated the patch for remembering zoom per site after I found out how to mitigate errors I had earlier and requested reviews now, but that might just be stalled for using a controversial event right now, which Neil just doesn't like to see at all in our code.
• OpenSearch:
  One thing that comes up time and again when users try to use it unsuccessfully and ask in our channels is OpenSearch support. This has been stalling for a long time basically just because we now have crufty, badly documented binary code around for search and a sidebar of which we don't know usage but which is crafted around a model that is far away from OpenSearch and not even fitting the current code.
  After we have decided some weeks ago that we'll set no priority on the sidebar working, I finally bit the bullet and tried to get our code to work with toolkit's OpenSearch module and so far, it has been easier than I thought - even though we are still missing a few things in my current WIP patch. I also did a very rough WIP for an optional search bar, but that needs a lot more work and isn't as high a priority as the main OpenSearch patch.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey Development Meeting, SeaMonkey build machines, visit to Bay Area and Mozilla HQ, building with libxul and/or "fatlibxul", organizational future for SeaMonkey, etc.

Esp. in the first half of this week I've been under a lot of strain, and generally I'm badly overworked and having too many things I think I need to take care of, resulting in symptoms that are very much pointing in the direction of an oncoming burn-out. At the same time, I'm trying to organize or help organize a few things that in the short term cause me some additional stress for planning, but should relief a lot of stress and frustration in the end. I hope that all will help my sanity somewhat (in the mean time - sorry when I might overreact at times) and help the SeaMonkey project to improve significantly in the future.