The roads I take...

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 43/2009 (October 19 - 25, 2009):

• Releases:
  Yeah, I know, the broken record again,but I guarantee you that this was the last week I've been watching over 2.0 and driving it for release.
  We published RC2 on Monday of that week and after a few days, the picture became clearer and clearer that this one would indeed go gold and so I prepared its conversion to the final 2.0 release as well as the updates of the website (including a feature page update and new screenshots) and spent the Sunday evening writing, getting feedback and native language "review" and finally pre-posting the announcement, so that everything would be ready for a Tuesday morning release.
• Build Machines:
  As it became clear that 2.0 wouldn't need another RC to be built, I could risk some temporary brokenness and possibly permanent changes to the build infrastructure and install the Win7 SDK as well as MozillaBuild 1.4 on the Windows build slaves, which in turn made the Windows comm-central-trunk builds go green again. The closed tree and needed clobbers on the machines for comm-1.9.1 branching did help as well and provide the perfect time to do that work.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  RC2 shipped in 19 official languages including US English, plus another one in experimental stage - and that state was transferred to final unchanged. Some more languages are working on getting ready in time for 2.0.1 - if you're a Mozilla localizer and 2.0 isn't available officially in your language yet, we'd welcome your help on getting in ready for 2.0.1!
  I also cared that we can get dashboard ready to support both SeaMonkey branches (sea20x and sea21x) in the future.
• German L10n:
  Michael Opitz did another large help update, which I could land so that we'll have help more up-to-date in an upcoming 2.0.1 update. Thanks, Michael!
• Various Discussions:
  comm-central branching, RC2 feedback, Mac build machines, Microsoft add-ons and blocklist, findbar, modal windows, download progress windows, dormant accounts, FF 3.5 -> 3.6 updates and SeaMonkey 2.x impact, Cyber Liberties Conference and Open Web track/talks, etc.

This status update is late once again, but somehow I had other things in mind in those last two days.

And I'm not sure I have fully realized yet that we managed to do that release we've been working on for almost 4 years - but it's great that we actually made that step and I can't tell enough how proud I am of everyone who helped that to come true - everyone one of those contributors and those fixing bugs in the 2.0 cycle are only one part of the people behind this release. In addition to the developers, all localizers, everyone doing QA, testing nightlies, and prereleases, filing bugs or otherwise helping the project, including the users - all those people in our community have been helping to build this release. I might be coordinating the project but it's all of you who make it a success, so congratulations to everyone in our community, you have done a really great job and made things possible that nobody would have believed when we started this project in 2005.
Well done, thanks for everything, and I'm looking forward to continuing this for improving the suite even further!

Das SeaMonkey-Projekt aus der Mozilla-Familie freut sich, heute seine komplett überarbeitete nächste Generation des "Alles-in-einem"-Internetpakets zu veröffentlichen: SeaMonkey 2.0 ist jetzt zum kostenlosen Download verfügbar und verschmilzt die Ideen hinter dem Netscape Communicator mit der modernen Plattform von Firefox 3.5 zu einem der überzeugendsten Open-Source-Produkte für fortgeschrittene Internetbenutzer.

Die Kombination von Internet-Browser, E-Mail- und Newsgroup-Programm, HTML-Editor, IRC-Chat und Web-Entwicklerwerkzeugen, die schon in ihren Vorgängerversionen eine breite Benutzerbasis etablieren konnte, wurde auf der modernen Mozilla-Plattform neu aufgebaut, die neben anderen Funktionen eine hervorragende Verwaltung für Erweiterungen (Add-ons) bietet.
Zusätzlich wurde sie weiter verbessert, beispielsweise mit Feed-Unterstützung (inklusive eines RSS- und Atom-Feedreaders in der Mail-Komponente), einem modernen Aussehen, Wiederherstellung von Browser-Tabs und Fenstern nach Abstürzen oder Neustarts, Mail-Tabs, automatischen Updates, intelligenter History-Suche aus der Adressleiste, schnellerem JavaScript, HTML5-Funktionen (wie Video oder herunterladbare Schriftsätze) und sogar Unterstützung für die Kalender-Erweiterung Lightning (von der eine Beta-Version zur Installation in SeaMonkey 2.0 innerhalb der nächsten Wochen erwartet wird).

Die Release Notes (Versionshinweise) enthalten eine detailliertere Liste der Verbesserungen und bekannten Probleme mit der neuen Version, sowie Installationsvoraussetzungen und -anleitungen. Weitere Informationen über SeaMonkey 2.0 und das SeaMonkey-Projekt erhalten Sie auf seamonkey-project.org bzw. der deutschsprachigen Seite seamonkey.at!

Some of you might remember that I was planning for an OpenWebCamp in Vienna - that was planned for October 27 but it was downgraded seriously due to not having a real Mozilla community around here yet and me not being able to organize the event myself when driving a major release at the same time. Still, the guys from quintessenz planned to have us on board for a track of the Cyber Liberties Conference, and so I did sit down with them for a while this week to work out what we actually can get into this track (speakers still wanted, if you can come around to talk on open web topics in Vienna on short notice, please tell me, travel costs can probably be reimbursed).

In any case, I told them that we're planning to release SeaMonkey 2.0 final right on that day, and the guys were suddenly cheering! We could do an official release event right there, they claimed, we could add this into press releases - and, above all, this could finally the topic they have been looking for as a label for the party on Monday!

In the end, what we decided there is the following:

• October 26, 20:00: q/Treff Spezial @ q/uintessenz - Museumsquartier Wien: Seamonkey 2.0 Release Party
• October 27, Open Web Camp/Track @ Cyber Liberties Conference, with a number of talks on Mozilla and the open web - and with an official SeaMonkey 2.0 Release Event

If anyone reading this is from or near Vienna, I'd be very happy to meet you at any of those events next week!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 42/2009 (October 12 - 18, 2009):

• Releases:
  This should hopefully have been the last week of trying to figure out what patches can still go into 2.0 and approving them, I built SeaMonkey 2.0 RC 2 (with a long track of redoing things), getting it ready for making it public yesterday (including a fix for partial updates so they apply correctly on Windows).
  This should be the final release candidate and if things go well in testing this week, it will be converted to a final 2.0 release scheduled for next Tuesday. woo-hoo!
• Smaller Fixes:
  I tested and reviewed a patch from Adrian to make extra-jar.mn work for localizers, esp. our French guys were happy about this, as they have split mail help into smaller chunks for easier L10n.
  A small patch for showing release notes on first run could also land for RC2, including a followup to make it actually work.
  And, trying to keep users' hard disks clean, I checked in a fix to remove a few unused modules on complete updates.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  Catalan chatzilla and venkman was added in time for RC2, Georgian and Swedish could be added as official locales, Turkish requested to only be experimental for RC2 and final due to unfinished translations.
  With that, RC2 ships in 19 official languages including US English, plus one in experimental stage!
• Various Discussions:
  Lightning support, comm-central branching, 1.9.1.4 builds, RC1 feedback, needed build and machine updates for 2.1/m-c trees, testday, Microsoft add-ons and blocklist, etc.

I hope that finally our builds for SeaMonkey 2.0 are done - we'll see how well RC 2 holds up in testing this week, but chances are good that next Tuesday will be the big day and we can go gold, just converting those exact build to the final ones. A tremendous development effort from all around our team went into this release in the 3½ years we've now been working on it, and the What's New list in the release notes only shows the tip of the iceberg. This is the first really major release from our project after we've been releasing fixed-up, slightly improved and rebranded version of the old Mozilla suite for quite some time.
This time we ship a new suite, a modern reincarnation of the original idea, and completely done by the volunteer team of the SeaMonkey project. Thanks to everyone who helped us to come so far, every one of those people in our community can be proud of him/herself these days.

Now let's test the hell out of it this week and then actually release it - are you with me?

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 41/2009 (September 28 - October 4, 2009):

• Releases:
  On the risk of sounding like a broken record, once again one of my main work items this week was release driving for 2.0 - the news is that we have released SeaMonkey 2.0 RC 1 on Saturday, I spent a large amount of time building it and later could push it public.
  Follwoing that, I worked on a few followup issues found in build verification and early testing.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  We could add Italian and UK English to the all-locales file for SeaMonkey - it looks like both are not just yet ready to deliver a complete localization for 2.0 final, but we hope they'll make 2.0.1 a number of weeks later.
  On the actual shipping side, RC 1 shipped in 18 languages including US English, which mean we have all locales on board that shipped either of the betas - with more to come in RC2 (which hopefully will be final).
• German L10n:
  I synched up the last changes to about:rights and ChatZilla just in time for the RC 1, German should therefore be complete for the 2.0 series - except for minor bugs, which are usually only reported when it goes to the masses in any case.
• Various Discussions:
  Lightning support, gloda, comm-central branching, 1.9.1.4 builds, RC1 feedback, etc.

I'm sorry my status updates are not coming as early as they should come, I had a few things to do this weekend including Monday, e.g. moving the SeaMonkey 1.x tinderboxes to a new location - and trying to recover from a cold.

In any case, things look very good when looking at RC1 feedback, no major issues reported, a few more smaller bugs have been fixed though - we are at 154 fixed-seamonkey2.0 bugs now, which is a very impressive number since the second beta and which also includes a number of fixes since RC1 already. We currently have no reported blockers and no requests for blocking, so we look to be ready to go for a RC2 which is as much ready to be the final 2.0 as we know yet (we're just waiting for a "go" on a new build of the 1.9.1.4 platform right now). Of course, only good testing will show if it can hold up and really go golden roughly a week after it's being published to testers as an RC.

Let's hope that nothing bad comes up and it can step in front of the curtain as the real thing later this month!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 40/2009 (September 28 - October 4, 2009):

• Releases:
  Another week of intense release driving - we had the string freeze for the whole 2.0 series this week, and the code freeze just after it. Things are looking good for the release, RC1 should come later this or early next week, depending on the speed of the build machines and our QA. We now have 130 fixed-seamonkey2.0 bugs, a lot of work has happened here!
• Default Theme Icons:
  The task icons for the new default theme could land this week.
• Build machines:
  On the weekend, I filed a bug on tinderbox reporting being brokwn which was fixed fast by Mozilla IT - thanks justdave!
  Also, I talked to Seth from the community giving program and he told we they are committed to give us the machines we were promised to get, so the ball in in IT's court now, I'll get into contact with them.
• EU MozCamp Prague:
  I had tons of interesting talk with people from all over the Mozilla community at EU MozCamp 2009 in Prague - from core SeaMonkey contributors via Moco folks and localizers to Thunderbird, Lightning and KompoZer people - and writing down everything here would be too much. Though it's clear that even I love this community!
  One topic is something i should probably highlight somewhat: The KompoZer folks and us from SeaMonkey agreed to cooperate much more in the future, we talked about how to work together to improve both SeaMonkey 2.1 and KompoZer 0.9 by sharing code and making KompoZer join comm-central for those Mozilla-1.9.3-based release and beyond.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  I fixed a small typo in an en-US file so that it doesn't creep into locales as well.
  Also, after the string freeze, I started the opt-in thread for 2.0 RC1 and final.
• German L10n:
  I synched up de SeaMonkey with the current trunk on the day before string freeze, so that only one change was left for opting in for RC1 later on.
• Various Discussions:
  Lightning support, gloda, comm-central branching, 1.9.1.4 changes, www.mozilla.org planning, etc.

Sorry this update is late once again, but I was somewhat busy getting all the L10n opt-ins etc. ready for starting 2.0 RC1 builds, which should be in progress now, hopefully we can push them public quite soon after some preliminary testing, so we get broader testing on the builds before we do a final release.

So, once we have those builds, please help testing!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 39/2009 (September 21 - 27, 2009):

• Releases:
  Once again, I spent a lot of time release driving work for 2.0, blockers are down to 5 and one request now. We are up to 113 fixed-seamonkey2.0 bugs now, quite a large number of small fixes landing to finish up this release.
• Default Theme Icons:
  I uploaded a new patch for the task icon part of the new icon set for the default theme that week, meanwhile this has already landed.
• Support Mails:
  I went through the accumulating support mails in my inbox subfolder once again (I only do that every few months) and replied to every mail there that hadn't got a reply from someone else. This always takes some time, but I don't want to leave such mails without any reply, even if it takes a long time to come and even if me or council are the wrong people to contact for support.
• ISPDB:
  I filed a few bugs on ISPDB, the database Mozilla Messaging is building for the "autoconfig" feature of Thunderbird 3, which we probably want to use for SeaMonkey as well in the future. It enables users to just enter their email address and have most account settings configured automatically by pulling the relevant info from the server.
• Statistics:
  I mailed Daniel from the Mozilla Metrics team if I could get a few numbers of how SeaMonkey 2 is doing, and he sent me some good data culminating in my recent blog post on SeaMonkey statistics. Interesting material, thanks, Daniel!
  I also received some interesting statistics on the spread of fixed bugs in the 2.0 cycle across people and components, I'll post about that when we get it updated after the code freeze.
• Various Discussions:
  Lightning support, 1.1.18, gloda, comm-central branching, Thunderbird UI changes, Mozilla Camp Europe, talk about Mozilla at a FOSS event in Vienna, etc.

I gave an interview this week with Mozilla Hispano, the English version of which has been posted to Mozilla Links.

And this weekend I'll be at EU MozCamp 2009 in Prague and hope to meet a few of you there - and show off SeaMonkey 2.0 there!