The roads I take...

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 21/2009 (May 18 - 24, 2009):

• SeaMonkey Build Machines:
  Lots of work still ongoing with the new buildbots with the ultimate goal of getting L10n builds from them, which I was able to resolvein the end with somewhat more work than anticipated. This involved fixing up locales Makefiles, fixing the fix to them, making our applications provide the info printed by part of those fixes and be nicer with including the Mac README in SeaMonkey.
  As a result, I could post a patch for L10 repack factory abstraction that I had proven to work for us and hopefully can land in the shared buildbotcustom repo.
  In other news, I found that the Linux x86_64 build problem was actually being out of disk space because I forgot to add the extra disk on the VM. As soon as I had added it, builds started to work fine.
  I also slightly fixed up the slave name TinderboxPrint functionality thankfully introduced by gozer into the buildbotcustom factories.
• Geolocation:
  Network Geolocation Provider could land on SeaMonkey with some more ported-from-Firefox improvements but without the actual URL for a provider on the network. This has been split off into its own bug, we need to get permission from Google to use their service before actually adding it.
  I filed dependent bugs on web page and help updates - help wanted (literally)!
• Build System:
  The automatic update of Windows file versions has landed on Mozilla 1.9.1 and comm-central for the SeaMonkey part. No worry about forgetting something and the Windows .exe reporting a different versions as the app itself any more (both for Firefox and SeaMonkey, by the way)!
  Release automation was updated to work with that change, some unused code in its tools can be cleaned up later as well.
• German L10n:
  A number of new strings to keep up with mostly mailnews development, also fixing 1.9.2 toolkit for German.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey tabmail work, mozilla.org planning, Mozilla meeting times, starting thoughts on new stable security release, etc.

We are fighting Parallels problems for our new buildbots still even though we're avoiding the more-than-8-VMs networking issue for the moment. I'll keep the SeaMonkey-Ports waterfall page updated with the open issues.
That said, the machines are producing and uploading nightly builds for Linux i686, Mac OS X, Windows and the somewhat unofficial Linux x86_64, as well as localized builds for all languages that build successfully on the three official platforms.

In other news, the download manager switch is getting pretty hot, as of today I have positive reviews even on the progress dialogs/windows, and the main switch patch is shaping up nicely now that Frank ("mcsmurf") took over driving it from Justin ("Callek") who is temporarily unavailable. We'll likely land all the reviewed changes in one push, which is now likely to contain 5 patches from 3 bugs and a combined diff set of 63 files changed, 5850 insertions and 660 deletions, according to diffstat output on the not-yet-completely-finished patch set I have in my Mercurial queue right now. I hope this will happen soon, it surely will be a significant change that brings us one giant leap nearer to a SeaMonkey 2 release.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 20/2009 (May 11 - 17, 2009):

• SeaMonkey Build Machines:
  I once again spent almost all my time on the build machines, trying to get things running more stable, evaluating what a Parallels server upgrade helped us, setting up the 64bit box and getting it imaged, making automatic start of buildbot on slave reboots work everywhere (though a windows slave has problems apparently caused by that), getting our improvements into buildbotcustom, and closing step 1 of that new buildbot setup.
  We now have that setup produce nightlies that are put into latest-comm-1.9.1 for testing and should work identically to the still official nightlies from the old configuration.
  A number of things still have to be resolved until the new configuration can move to production (sucking the old buildslave machines into the new generic pools) and beyond, for all of which I have filed bugs now: localized builds, Mac VM crashes/reboots, x86_64 build/linking problems, getting graphs up, finally getting the release harness to work.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey tabmail work, mozilla.org planning, Mozilla meeting times, starting thoughts on new stable security release, etc.

I hope we can figure out the Parallels VM network losses and the Mac VM instability cited above, as once I have figured out the L10n build stuff, the new configuration should be on par with the old and able to take over production, which will make maintenance of our build and test boxes easier and ultimately enable us to do builds with Mozilla trunk as well as move towards release automation, which again will be a huge leap forward.
All that currently needs almost my full work time although I should take care of other stuff as well, but once this all is finished, the build and release processes should be easier to take care of, so ultimately I should have more time for other things. Let's hope it actually will work out that way!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 19/2009 (May 4 - 10, 2009):

• Download Manager:
  The patch for making toolkit UI tests not fail with our new UI has now landed, and so has a first build system part of the backend work so that a correct rebuild will be triggered when we change app-config.mk with the main switch.
• Build System:
  A patch to make version changes apply to the Windows .exe automatically could also go into mozilla-central this week, I hope to get it into 1.9.1 so it actually helps the SeaMonkey release process.
• Geolocation:
  My geolocation patch has review now, but we need to seek permission from Google to actually use their service by adding that URL to our default prefs, and they don't have official policies up for that as it is a new service. I'm in talk with them and hope we find a solution soon enough to be able to ship final, possibly even beta with it.
• SeaMonkey Build Machines:
  The vast amount of time this week ran into the new SeaMonkey build machines. I did set up all the slaves and got them to a build configuaration that does most of what we need, even though a few bugs are left and l10n repackaging isn't on yet (needs more work).
  With having that to test, I could do an actual patch for mozilla dir abstraction in buildbot factories and for adding comm-central build classes to the shared buildbotcustom repo.
  There was a lot of fallout in bugs I filed during that work a some patches attached for the buildbotcustom stuff, also some more requests to IT.
  The plan is now to suck the suck the "old" Windows and Linux VMs into the generic slave pools of the new configuration and replace the old Tiger Macs with additional Leopard VMs and make the new buildbot master drive both trunk and branch with those pools then.
  We still have some distance to go with that, but things start to look quite good for the future of the SeaMonkey build infrastructure now. Thanks to everyone involved to make this possible.
• German L10n:
  Updates for string changes in mailnews so that German goes green again.
• Various Discussions:
  Error console, xpcshell-tests target and test directories, multi-process plans for platform, test reporting on tinderbox, mozilla.org planning, redundant master password prompts, cleaning up personal bugmail folders, polish bugs, etc.

The bug for them was filed half a year ago and it took some poking of people and some time, but the great thing has happened and we now have 14 virtual machines for building SeaMonkey instead of the 6 we had up to now, and we get to have our all-virtual Macs running on Leopard instead of the physical Tiger machines that are being obsoleted with the new configuration going into production. We also have the ability of all machines for one platform being able to run any cycles, so that we don't end up with build machines being idle all the time and unit tests not getting run enough or branch machines being idle and trunk being clogged (once we have both trunk and branch running, which is the primary purpose of all this). And we even will be able to run automated release building off those machines - once I have fully configured and tested that. And we will be sharing a lot more of the custom buildbot class code with Thunderbird and even Firefox so we all can profit from each other's work.
It has been long in coming and there's still some work left to do, but this is really great and should help us immensely.

Once again, thanks to everyone involved, from Community Giving via IT to Build & Release and others who care and help!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 18/2009 (April 27 - May 3, 2009):

• Download Manager:
  I updated the tests for the new UI for the review comments, everything is ready for checkin there now, only waiting for the backend.
  I also worked out another approach to making toolkit UI test not fail when our UI patch is in, and reacted to review comments on progress dialogs - I need some more clarifications there before continuing work on them.
• Automated Tests:
  The random browser test orange we had in SeaMonkey should be fixed now - the problem was us relying too fast on focus() being successful, the solution to use setTimeout() to just let the focus settle. Yes, this is one of the few cases where setTimeout() makes the test more reliable when usually it's the other way round.
  When a new places test broke in SeaMonkey, I found out the problem and fixed it. I'm starting to get tired of the tests stuff though, doing it is too little fun - and that's a bad sign as tests are quite helpful overall.
• Build Infrastructure:
  Slowly, I hear that the new SeaMonkey buildbot machines are becoming a reality, unfortunately the Linux refplatform image doesn't convert as nicely to the new host infrastructure as the Window image does.
  Without those machines, it's not that easy for me to test the WIP for mozilla dir abstraction in buildbot factories, but I started this to get the ball rolling - maybe we have a chance to get as far as being able to try release automation with Beta 1.
  The patch for automatically inserting the Windows version in our .exe files should also be nearing checkin, which should ease release generation no matter what way it's being done.
• Geolocation:
  Recently, the Firefox geolocation support got a big overhaul and a network-based geolocation provider was integrated into toolkit. I hacked up a first patch for getting this all to work in SeaMonkey, but it needs a bit more work from how I read the review comments (though I don't fully understand them yet).
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  After stalling some time for review, the patch for making profiles easier to localize could make it into the tree, and though the landing was somewhat bumpy, we now should be at a state where localizers have less work to get the default profile files localized and we have more of a guarantee of what is actually in the default profile in all localizations.
• German L10n:
  I fixed a long-standing password management bug in the German localization of toolkit and mostly kept up with German SeaMonkey localization (except for stuff landed over the weekend).
• Various Discussions:
  Solaris and aus2-community, error console, EV cert UI, test failures, mail account autoconfig work, SeaMonkey statistics, Mac theme rework, etc.

Theoretically, we would already have or be about to freeze for SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 right now. While this is being pushed out a bit due to our friends from Thunderbird not being ready to freeze for the next beta themselves, and us still missing the two larger features of download manager and tabmail, things start to feel more and more like being in beta phase. The feed integration suite is feature complete with having detection, preview and an internal reader for feeds now. Some minor polish might still be in order before final, but that part is surely beta-worthy now. I hope we get the last missing features as well as the better Mac theme in very soon so we can officially designate SeaMonkey 2.0 to be in beta and feature-complete, which will be a quite important milestone. Stay tuned here for more news on that and where where we're heading after that step!