The roads I take...

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 47/2010 (November 22 - 28, 2010):

• Releases:
  I helped Callek to run the 2.0.11 build process this week, unfortunately he almost learned more about how to deal with problems than how to smoothly do a release run in an automated way. Still, we have builds on on FTP and should get them on the beta channel today.
• Build Infrastructure:
  I filed a bug on the machine name tweak I needed to keep things going when I turned off optimized builds for 32bit Mac, but it looks like this will not be needed once we switch to buildbot 0.8 (hopefully soon).
  The fix for the updates problem we've seen in the 2.0.11 release run was accepted though and has landed. In addition, I filed a bug on our side to set a default hg user to match what the Firefox folks have done.
  I also filed the bug for the Windows bustage we have been seeing on trunk, the work got done by others though (I don't really have the knowledge to fix something like that).
  In addition, I landed a change for 64bit Mac IPC prefs to fix the Snow Leopard experience (automated tests caught that!) - though Mark suggested exact this change, so it's attributed to him.
• (Tahoe) Data Manager:
  Once again I did put a whole lot of work into this module, a 1.3 version of the Tahoe Data Manager add-on is up for review on AMO with all that work included.
  The major things I added are a possibility to add permissions and switching all data viewer hooks in SeaMonkey to open Data Manager, during that work I found I needed to slightly tweak the syntax of the open specific views calls and that needed an update of the data type listing patch as well. I also made DEL key on permissions and ESC key on forget work, added an icon to the Data Manager tab, and finally made IDN be displayed correctly.
  Now I think only the domain icons and the website storage panel are unpatched items on the open bug list for Data Manager.
• Jökulsárlón Download Manager:
  The Jökulsárlón Download Manager add-on has been reviewed on AMO this week, so people should be able to find it publicly (even though AMO search could be improved).
  I also got a few bug reports already and promptly worked on them - the tab icon and DEL key handling have been fixed in the repo, I'm just waiting for some more work before I upload a new version with those.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  With the spinning of 2.0.11 builds, we could add Finnish as the newest locale in release builds, thanks to the localizers for providing this work!
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey user questions, website updates, 1.9.1 branch breakage, group/list spam, mobile woes and possibilities, etc.

It was exciting for me this time to see a SeaMonkey release being generated without myself actually doing much except for some "hand-holding" over IRC, thanks to Callek for this work - and yes, I hope things will run smoother in the future, we don't always run into multiple errors from the automation harness.

While I'm using my N810 a lot these days to ssh into my desktop and reboot it when the graphics driver acts up, garbles the screen and makes the computer not react to any keyboard or mouse action any more, it looks like the screen's flex connector of the device has been slightly damaged (nothing is visible) and it badly reacts to any touch event any more. I read about people who had that problem while there was still some guarantee on the device and they got the display assembly changed - but after 2.5 years, I guess the life time of this device as a take-with-me-everywhere things is coming to and end. Unfortunately, the MeeGo phone I had hoped to be available at this time isn't here, and neither is a really decent MeeGo tablet (and I only want a device with a really open system, even Android is too closed for me - and I'd hope it can run Fennec 4, of course). I guess I'll have to live with substandard trickery to get anything out of the N810 for some time - or I get a really cheap N900 from somewhere. Of course, Nokia could just send me a prototype MeeGo phone for beta testing (I know they have such a device - a not too large tablet would do it as well), but where do I apply for that (I love testing unfinished software, reporting bugs and maybe looking into some thing myself, you know)?

All in all, I know things could be much better in many things I'm involved with, and I know the future will bring substantial improvements, I just can't await the next steps that show that - and I really want to be a part of it and help to make it true!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 46/2010 (November 15 - 21, 2010):

• Build Infrastructure:
  As the first Mac64 slaves are available now, I did care to set them up correctly to run builds and tests on trunk. This was successful, and so we switched trunk to Intel 32/64bit universal builds and finally dropped PPC support from SeaMonkey 2.1 nightlies (and future milestone/release builds). I needed some trickery to support running debug builds and tests on 32bit Leopard still, while not producing any other trunk builds on that, but I could get it to work, and so we are running debug tests on both that and 64bit Snow Leopard now. There's no change to 2.0, by the way, it still receives nightlies and updates with PPC support for as long as we maintain it.
  I also did a few comm-central build system reviews this week.
• Places:
  I landed the ports of Firefox places changes in SeaMonkey this week, we should be mostly up to date with Firefox 4 in this regard now.
• Search:
  I updated the patch to port search code reviews to Firefox, hoping that this will find its way into official repositories some day.
• (Tahoe) Data Manager:
  Most of my work this week centered around add-ons - in the case of Data Manager, I worked on both the "Tahoe" add-on version and the SeaMonkey-internal implementation.
  The patch for selecting entries after delete landed on SeaMonkey trunk and is available in the 1.0.3 add-on version currently public on AMO.
  I did revise the patch for opening specific views somewhat though, as I worked through pointing UI to Data Manager instead of the older separate managers. A first patch for this is up for page info, while the 1.1 add-on (currently under review on AMO) has a full implementation of this. I realized though that for this full implementation I needed to code up something I've had in mind for some time - a selection to show domains for a specific data type only. A patch for this is up and integrated in the 1.1 add-on.
  I needed to wrestle the UI integration of the add-on for a while, esp. wrt the Firefox preferences window, and it required overriding JS functions in both SeaMonkey and Firefox, but I hope I needed up with a working solution. To be fully satisfactory, the function to add permissions will be needed as well, though.
• Jökulsárlón Download Manager:
  After some more work on it, I could announce the Jökulsárlón Download Manager add-on this week, bringing the features of the SeaMonkey download manager into a tab inside Firefox 4 or SeaMonkey 2.1!
  I have integrated previous work I had done on improving the progress/properties windows, which are available in that add-on as well, added a pref window to select them, and put some amount of work into making the download manager look reasonable in a tab (by eliminating its menubar and statusbar - menubar items are now available in the toolbar, the full path from the statusbar is available as a list column). In addition, I ended up adding a domain column to the download list so that you see from where you did get those files, as well as making the browser more responsive while loading the list.
  The add-on is currently under review on AMO, but already available in the sandbox, comments/feedback is appreciated.
  I have more work in mind for this add-on, though probably not as large items as for Data Manager, bugs/enhancements are probably best filed in my personal Bugzilla as this is a personal project.
• SeaMonkey development website:
  My SeaMonkey development website had some problems recently with gathering data from Bugzilla, I switched all that gathering to bzAPI now instead of csv and microsummary output types of regular Bugzilla bug list pages. With this change, things should work nicely now - and reading JSON is surely nicer than reading CSV or parsing strings, even from PHP.
• German Dictionaries:
  The new versions of the German spellchecker dictionary (including Austrian and Swiss variants) was approved on AMO, so now they work fine with Mozilla-2.0-based applications (and it got an update of the underlying dictionary code as well).
• German L10n:
  I landed another help update from Michael (thanks for that work!) and discussed a few topics that came up again when Kadir went through all the open bugs in our Bugzilla component - some nice progress and nice cleanup achieved there!
• Various Discussions:
  Module owners, Mozilla websites, Vienna meeting outcome, SeaMonkey's and my future, 1.9.1 branch breakage, etc.

I just realized that recently, I have put quite a few pieces of work on the shoulders of the AMO editors/reviewers team, by uploading new dictionary versions, two new "Tahoe" versions and the all-new "Jökulsárlón". Well, I guess that's what that team is there for, and I encourage everyone who knows enough about code and writing add-ons to join that group, you're always needed there, and those reviews are a major part in why the Mozilla add-on ecosystem is working that well.
In general, I think we need to put a lot more thought into the add-on system, as this is a really central point to Mozilla's success, and an open add-on system is directly pushing forward the mission - in the future probably in concert with a really open web application exchange (I'm not sure if "market" is the right word there).
Also, in the light of driving the web and HTML forward, we might want to think about if we can bring things that make add-ons really great technically to the web as a standard... HTML overlays anyone?

"Jökulsárlón" is an Icelandic glacier lagoon that has pieces breaking off the glacier and swimming through it as icebergs on their way to the sea, just like files through the download manager.

My newest add-on for Firefox 4 and SeaMonkey 2.1 is using this code name and makes the download manager UI run inside a browser tab and in a tabular style similar to what SeaMonkey is using. It also supports the use of progress windows instead of the download manager if preferred.



This is using the code I wrote earlier for SeaMonkey's download manager and even progress window UI, those interested in the actual code find it in the add-on source repo.

I'm not planning to backport this code to older versions than Firefox 4 or SeaMonkey 2.1, any time I put into this id better spent on improving what's there and I'd rather convert more of it to use things like Services.jsm, which only exists in Mozilla 2 code.
I will also not backport this work to SeaMonkey due to the discussions that had been going on around the progress windows. I'd happily support people porting code though - and I'd also accept patches to improve the add-on if anyone wants to help, of course.

And for everyone else, if you're interested in a download manager running inside a tab in a tabular interface, please test this add-on and give feedback!
Right now, it's not reviewed for public on AMO yet, it's in the sandbox, but that shouldn't stop you from testing it - feedback comments improve the chances of the add-on being made public!

As I mentioned recently, I have picked up on the Data Manager again, and the new version of the add-on has been made public yesterday.

There's not much in this feature-wise, just a small improvement on deleting entries from lists and a possibility to launch certain views directly when calling it (and that also means it has its own caller function now), next to a few more code restructuring changes from the SeaMonkey reviews, so I only bumped the version number to 1.0.3 and nothing higher - yet.

The really large change though is that the add-on now has a public code name. I have been thinking about this for a while and in the end decided to use code names for all my add-on projects that improve Firefox and/or SeaMonkey functionality, and use bodies of water for them - based on my SeaMonkey roots.



The Data Manager's new code name "Tahoe", and old Washo Indian word for "deep water", refers to a lake on the borders of California and Nevada that is known, among other things, for very deep and very clear waters - similar to the deep reach and clear sight in data that this add-on provides.

I've also picked up Download Manager UI work again, though only as an add-on - even though if it's not up on AMO yet because it's not ready enough for this at the moment. Currently, there's only a source repository for it - and it already has the code name "Jökulsárlón", after an Icelandic glacier lagoon that has pieces breaking off the glacier and swimming through it as icebergs on their way to the sea, just like files through the download manager.

While the Download Manager work will not go into SeaMonkey code, the Data Manager work is or will be (patches are up for the current changes) - and the add-on source code is public as well, of course.

In the mean time, have fun using Tahoe Data Manager - built into SeaMonkey 2.1 or as an add-on for Firefox 4!

P.S.: My German-language dictionaries also have new 2.0.2 versions available in variants for Germany, Austria, Switzerland.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 45/2010 (November 8 - 14, 2010):

• Build Infrastructure:
  Got reviews on the patch for packaged test triggering on Windows unittest-build and landed it on buildbotcustom trunk.
  I filed a bug on getting things moving on Mac64 slaves, even though we don't have any new machines. Because of that, we're reducing the 32bit Mac pool (doing 2.0 branch universal builds and possibly some tests) to just two machines and use the other three as a 64bit pool (doing 2.1/trunk universal builds and tests). That's not ideal, but should at least get us going.
• AMO URLs:
  I saw a small change of AMO URLs for discovery pane, etc. being done on Firefox, so I filed bugs for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey to do the same, and created and landed a patch for SeaMonkey.
• Places:
  I went through a number of recent places changes on the Firefox side and ported them to SeaMonkey where reasonable. While doing that, I stumbled over contentAreaClick needing some porting as well, so I filed it (I probably won't work on it though).
• Data Manager:
  I started looking into some of the followup improvements I had planned for Data Manager, like opening specific views or selecting entries after delete, patches for those are up for review and a new add-on version is also up, along with the add-on having a new code name - but I'll report on that once the new version is public.
• Download Manager Add-on:
  Even though I have thrown the towel on SeaMonkey download manager work some time ago, I decided to pick up some download manager work again - but not on SeaMonkey's internal version (I still stand by not touching it). Instead, I've picked up the Firefox add-on I had up as an experiment, but I've completely restructured the code after the model of my Data Manager and I'm trying to get Download Manager to work in a tab as well. I'll report on more of this once I have something up to submit on AMO.
• German Dictionaries:
  I worked on the German spellchecker dictionary (including Austrian and Swiss variants) to work around the problem with the previous variants that appeared with Gecko 2.0 not unpacking add-ons by default.
• SeaMonkey website:
  There had been a long-standing item between me and David from the Mozilla Foundation to get some promotion for the Mozilla mission up on the SeaMonkey start page and finally, we have made this a reality for the default version shown to users of stable releases (or to people with JS turned off).
• Various Discussions:
  Module owners, FF4b7 release, SeaMonkey's and my future, HTML5 forms, newsgroup spam, etc.

When it comes to code work, I'll put more time into add-ons rather than SeaMonkey-specific patches, and this week's work on the Data and Download Managers is a part of this effort. I don't think that coding is where I excel the most, but I think I have a few interesting ideas in those areas, and the best language to express them might be to get them coded up in some way - maybe others will jump in and help improving my code later on. Also, I really want to enable Firefox 4 users to profit from my work and those ideas - in addition to SeaMonkey 2.1 users, of course.
And I have some more ideas to come - probably even a few I just can't code up all by myself. But I'll try to at least prototype a few of them as add-ons.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 44/2010 (November 1 - 7, 2010):

• Build Infrastructure:
  Finally, after a long time of complaining about not having one, I ended up setting up a clobberer for SeaMonkey on our buildmaster box instead. It seems to work fine and not to disturb the master itself, which is very helpful given that we probably have to make due with the resources we have for a while longer.
  I also seem to have found the problem why packaged tests were not triggered on SeaMonkey 2.0 for Windows and should have actually fixed it on our side but I still need reviews to land it on the main buildbotcustom branch.
  I also did some reviews for comm-central build system patches.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  I add the Finnish localization to SeaMonkey trunk.
  As Swedish, Italian, and a number of other trunk nightlies were missing, I once again did the update trick on them to get them going again.
• German L10n:
  I once again synched up the German L10n of SeaMonkey trunk with the original files, but also finally localized "Attachment" (to "Anhang") and switched "History" to the localization we have been establishing in the minds of German users through Firefox for a few years now ("Chronik").
  In addition, due to Axel's newly added checks in compare-locales, I found a long-going parameter usage bug in News and corrected it.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey status bar, planet.mozilla.de additions, Bugzilla workflow, getting FF4b7 out the door, etc.

As is probably visible from this report, I'm back to normal work, though I'm trying to work at a lighter pace and mostly concentrating on TODOs. Also, my computer is acting up badly at times, I think it's probably the graphics driver - blame me for using the edge of open source development.

Still, things are going along nicely - for me and SeaMonkey!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 43/2010 (October 25 - 31, 2010):

• Releases:
  Due to an unfortunate in-the-wild security exploit for Gecko, all Mozilla project needed to do a fast-turnaround release. Firefox managed to ship theirs slightly under 48 hours after this vulnerability had been reported, I worked on that "oilspill" on our side and could ship SeaMonkey 2.0.10 a small number of hours later with some help from Callek. From the start of any actual work on the release engineering side until everything was out on the wire publicly, we took just slightly under 24 hours even though our build hardware acted up a little.
  I also reported a possible improvement for some helpful script that helped me out of a situation that needed ugly manual work previously.
• SeaMonkey Developer Meeting:
  On Monday, 10 people from our core community continued the first ever SeaMonkey Developer Meeting here in Vienna with a hacking day, and the fours of us even left on Tuesday did a small sightseeing tour in this beautiful city. I hope everyone enjoyed that, and I hope the hacking day also was a positive experience with some nice results.
• Various Discussions:
  Missing L10n builds, SeaMonkey future, Bugzilla changes, 0day and reactions, some beta feedback, anti-spam measures on newsgroups, etc.

Following my post on personal priorities, I'm trying to cut down on my work time to arrive at saner levels and make room for adding in this "life" things potentially, which is said to be really awesome once you get the hang of it. Also, I might even cut down SeaMonkey work more than that to make room for other things I'd like to work on, I'll see how that works out.

That said, the discussion of the future of SeaMonkey is written on a different page, we're working on it, made some decisions, need some more discussions with other parties, but large steps are upcoming there. The SeaMonkey project will move on, but will still be around and probably for quite some time. How much I will be involved for the long run is something I'm currently thinking about, but I surely will help in this transition that is upcoming and ensure that it can go on - with out without my involvement.

I personally am trying hard to get a grip on some real life and a hopefully bright personal future - and don't fear, I'll still be around for quite a while (or more)!