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Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 release

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Timo Pietilä

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Mar 15, 2010, 6:10:46 PM3/15/10
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Hello.

Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 release date was set to be today (yesterday for
me). I searched ftp-site and didn't find release in "releases"
-directory, so I did some digging. It seems that 2.0.0.24 is in
"nightly" -builds, and beta is changed to 2.0.0.25pre. Not sure if this
is yet the final, so I wait another day.

There seem to be bugzilla bug for creating release:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547309

Can someone decipher this to me (last comment in page):
----
Mike, this is removing throttling for Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 -> .24 updates on
the release channel. The plan is to release .24 on Monday 15th. The MoMo
guys
want to throttle 2.0.0.24 -> 3.0.3 to begin with, so this just moves the
throttle up there and re-throttles beta.
----

"throttling"? "MoMo guys"? I thought I can read English pretty well, but
in this case I have no idea what throttling means in this context. "MoMo
guys" obviously means some "other" people than those doing the release,
but who?

Timo Pietilä

Mark Banner

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Mar 16, 2010, 5:08:10 AM3/16/10
to
On 15/03/2010 22:10, Timo Pietilä wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 release date was set to be today (yesterday for
> me). I searched ftp-site and didn't find release in "releases"
> -directory, so I did some digging. It seems that 2.0.0.24 is in
> "nightly" -builds, and beta is changed to 2.0.0.25pre. Not sure if this
> is yet the final, so I wait another day.

It got delayed by a day as it says in the bug. As always, even if there
is a directory on releases, don't trust it as final until we announce
it. It is just possible that we'll find something at the last minute and
pull the release back from the mirrors and delay it.

> Can someone decipher this to me (last comment in page):
> ----
> Mike, this is removing throttling for Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 -> .24
> updates on
> the release channel. The plan is to release .24 on Monday 15th. The MoMo
> guys
> want to throttle 2.0.0.24 -> 3.0.3 to begin with, so this just moves the
> throttle up there and re-throttles beta.
> ----
>
> "throttling"? "MoMo guys"? I thought I can read English pretty well, but
> in this case I have no idea what throttling means in this context. "MoMo
> guys" obviously means some "other" people than those doing the release,
> but who?

As you have already been told, Mozilla Corporation (typically referred
to as MoCo) is driving this release - not Mozilla Messaging. Mozilla
Messaging is typically shorted to MoMo.

Throttling is referring to the type of update. See here for background
information: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Update_Terms

Since 3.0 was released we've offered for the majority of that time a
manual update from 2.0.0.23 to 3.0.x. Fully throttled = manual update only.

As any one release can only provide updates to one version (i.e. we
can't do a 2.0.0.23 -> 2.0.0.24 update offer and a 2.0.0.23 to 3.0.x MU
offer at the same time), then 2.0.0.23 users will be offered 2.0.0.24.
Like all minor updates this will be an automatic update. This means we
remove the throttling which lets the updates be automatic.


Once 2.0.0.24 is released, we've got some new major update offers ready
that we'll push out, and again these will be on manual updates for the
time being.

Standard8

Timo Pietilä

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Mar 16, 2010, 6:53:37 AM3/16/10
to

That clarifies that. Thanks.

> Throttling is referring to the type of update. See here for background
> information: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Update_Terms
>
> Since 3.0 was released we've offered for the majority of that time a
> manual update from 2.0.0.23 to 3.0.x. Fully throttled = manual update only.

> As any one release can only provide updates to one version (i.e. we
> can't do a 2.0.0.23 -> 2.0.0.24 update offer and a 2.0.0.23 to 3.0.x MU
> offer at the same time), then 2.0.0.23 users will be offered 2.0.0.24.
> Like all minor updates this will be an automatic update. This means we
> remove the throttling which lets the updates be automatic.

OK. I got that backwards, so I was a bit confused and a bit worried
about that.

> Once 2.0.0.24 is released, we've got some new major update offers ready
> that we'll push out, and again these will be on manual updates for the
> time being.

(after this this gets a bit off topic, so feel free to skip all this)

Looking at where TB3 is right now, I wouldn't offer update at all, just
maybe advertise that it is possible to update. To me it seems that TB3
got out quite a bit too early, there are a lot of showstopping bugs
around, and some features that people liked (like ability to collapse
header section of the message panel) got removed for no good reason.

I collect a short list of what I have heard and what I personally find
irritating or absolutely unacceptable, maybe that can be used to help
what needs to be done:

1) offline download for IMAP folders should not be default after
upgrading from TB2 to TB3. Gloda or no gloda, that is a _BAD_ thing.

That one is total showstopper for me.

2) (read about this) msf filesystem has bug that causes indexes to get
broken
3) smart folders override of all folders as default in upgrade
classifies as bug
4) (read about this) nested addressbook lists do not get expanded
correctly and posting to those lists is not possible.
5) inability to collapse header panel is loss of useful feature, added
buttons there is actually weakening of UI. There should be ability to
restore old behavior.
6) inability to completely turn off tabs. To me that is really minor,
but there seem to be people that really dislike tabs. Some control of
tabs behavior in options is in order.
7) (read about this) handling of format flowed (or something like that)
gets broken in TB3 when it was correct in TB2. I haven't noticed
anything in this, but as principle breaking standard RFC is not a good
thing no matter what the reason is.
8) new account wizard tries to be too smart and gets things wrong. There
should be possibility to go directly manual setting like in TB2. I also
heard that this is completely broken for POP3 accounts. "Too smart"
wizards that cannot be bypassed are always irritating.
9) lack of proper documentation of autoconfig scripts from people that
really know how things work in preference settings. Good documentation
of that would be really useful for sysadmins like me. There should also
be link to that in main Thunderbird web page. There are bits and pieces
around, but nothing really "complete" and finding all those bits and
pieces is quite a work. Autoconfig script itself, however, is very good
feature.

10) And finally something that is broken in all current versions of TB:

Local cache for messages and program settings both reside in /user
profile/appdata and message cache is not separated in /user
profile/local settings/appdata in windows machines. That causes them to
be included in roaming profiles and because you can't exclude that
without excluding also program settings you are in situation where you
either get too big profile (by downloading messages) or no settings for
program which basically means that you can't use roaming profile to roam
with TB.

In TB3 that is extremely bad with its behavior of defaulting to offline
download of all messages, but it is also broken for TB2, which downloads
newsgroup messages to local machine, and "local folders" -account
obviously resides there. TB2 that is not that bad, because it handles
IMAP better and gigabyte-class mailboxes don't get downloaded, but it
still is bad enough that it grows profile size considerably.

Timo Pietilä

Timo Pietilä

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Mar 18, 2010, 1:30:39 AM3/18/10
to
Mark Banner wrote:
> On 15/03/2010 22:10, Timo Pietilä wrote:
>> Hello.
>>
>> Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 release date was set to be today (yesterday for
>> me). I searched ftp-site and didn't find release in "releases"
>> -directory, so I did some digging. It seems that 2.0.0.24 is in
>> "nightly" -builds, and beta is changed to 2.0.0.25pre. Not sure if this
>> is yet the final, so I wait another day.
>
> It got delayed by a day as it says in the bug. As always, even if there
> is a directory on releases, don't trust it as final until we announce
> it. It is just possible that we'll find something at the last minute and
> pull the release back from the mirrors and delay it.

Just realized that I don't know where that announcement is made. If the
mozilla ftp-site releases-directory cannot be trusted, and there is no
webpage for TB2 then where?

Here? Releases-wiki? (goes from upcoming releases to already made?)

Timo Pietilä

Ludovic Hirlimann

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Mar 21, 2010, 2:35:24 PM3/21/10
to Timo Pietilä

Yes


--
Ludovic Hirlimann MozillaMessaging QA lead
http://www.spreadthunderbird.com/aff/79/2

Nathan Tuggy

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Mar 21, 2010, 6:44:52 PM3/21/10
to

Hmm, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547309 says it's
released already -- perhaps MoCo forgot to update the wiki? :-/
--
‖ I hit the CTRL key but I'm still not in control! ‖
http://tagzilla.mozdev.org v0.066

ISHIKAWA, Chiaki

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Apr 1, 2010, 2:17:08 PM4/1/10
to

I would like to thank the people who made it possible to release 2.0.0.24.

Some of my colleagues are using TB2 series and that choice was made
based on suggestion from a few other colleagues and me many years ago.

These real-world users are very conservative and they don't jump
on any major revision, especially, N.*0* release, and so they are
looking at TB 3.0.x, but have been suffering from a few problems in
2.0.0.23.

Most severe one they experienced was related to the folders silently
hitting 4GB size limit.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387502

I just checked, and found that my copy of TB2 on windows got updated to
2.0.0.24 in the last 10 days or so, and at least it seems this
particular 4gb size bug was fixed in the public 2.0.0.24
release(finally!), and so these colleagues of mine can exchange largish
PDF, Powerpoint marketing material attachments every so often without
silently breaking their folders. At least, they are warned that the copy
is aborted due to size limit now.

Thanks.

--
int main(void){int j=2010;/*(c)2010 cishikawa. */
char t[] ="<CI> @abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.,\n\"";
char *i = "@>qtCIuqivb,gCwe\np@.ietCIuqi\"tqkvv is>dnamz";
while(*i)((j+=(int)strchr(t,*i++)-(int)t),(j%=sizeof t-1),
(putchar(t[j])));return 0;}/*under GPL */

Dan Mosedale

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Apr 1, 2010, 3:58:50 PM4/1/10
to dev-apps-t...@lists.mozilla.org
On 4/1/10 11:17 AM, ISHIKAWA, Chiaki wrote:
> Most severe one they experienced was related to the folders silently
> hitting 4GB size limit.
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387502
>
> I just checked, and found that my copy of TB2 on windows got updated
> to 2.0.0.24 in the last 10 days or so, and at least it seems this
> particular 4gb size bug was fixed in the public 2.0.0.24
> release(finally!), and so these colleagues of mine can exchange
> largish PDF, Powerpoint marketing material attachments every so often
> without silently breaking their folders. At least, they are warned
> that the copy is aborted due to size limit now.
You yourself deserve a big round of thanks as well, since you wrote the
patch. :-)

Dan

geekmaster1

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Apr 15, 2010, 9:30:56 AM4/15/10
to

im confused. is 2.0.0.25pre newer than 3.0?

Nathan Tuggy

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Apr 15, 2010, 1:09:22 PM4/15/10
to

Yes and no. 2.0.0.25pre builds are newer than 3.0.0 builds by strict
date, but the code base is a lot older -- 2.0 was released in 2007
(early April, I believe) and has had no feature work since that year,
only security fixes, while the 3.0 branch finished its last few
non-security tweaks in the last month or two. A better comparison would
be between 2.0.0.25pre and 3.0.5pre -- they will tend to share very
similar build dates but their code bases are quite different. Or, if you
like, compare 3.1b2pre, or 3.2a1pre, or.... ;)
--
Nathan Tuggy [:tuggyne]
nat...@tuggycomputer.com

dannymichel

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Apr 15, 2010, 9:47:20 PM4/15/10
to
On Apr 15, 1:09 pm, Nathan Tuggy <bugzi...@nathan.tuggycomputer.com>
wrote:

so it's like having two different apps?
why would one chose one over the other?

Nathan Tuggy

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Apr 16, 2010, 1:35:07 AM4/16/10
to

Only to the extent that versions are normally different from each other
in software -- for example, the difference between e.g. Windows Vista
and Windows 7. (Nowhere near the magnitude of the difference between
Windows and Linux, though. ;))

> why would one chose one over the other?

2.0 is familiar to a lot of people and will not be changing any more
(except possibly for security updates, but those are very unlikely now).
3.0, on the other hand, is the current version, which made a lot of very
visible changes, many of which take getting used to. However, in my
opinion, these changes are worthwhile. (3.1 will make a few more changes
and simplify the upgrade process from 2.0 a lot, also.) For the list and
a good explanation, see
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/features/

Hope that clarifies it.

Timo Pietilä

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Apr 16, 2010, 2:37:29 AM4/16/10
to

Some of the changes are, but most of them were quite badly designed.
Apparently there were nowhere near enough real-life testing made.
Results are like that new account wizard that made it almost impossible
to choose pop3 account, and in my case it guesses absolutely everything
wrong (well, no t everything, it guessed that I use IMAP right, but
that's all), so that I need to go manual, which is not possible from
start. AFAIK it also has a bug in msf system that corrupts your mails
sooner or later. If that has been fixed I'm not aware of it.

Staying in TB2 was a safe choice. It simply works. Everything in it. All
add-ons work and UI is less bloated.

> (3.1 will make a few more changes
> and simplify the upgrade process from 2.0 a lot, also.) For the list and
> a good explanation, see
> http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/features/

3.1 OTOH might be worth upgrading to. It clearly is better than 3.0.
Like Vista vs Win7. TB2 is like XP in that comparision. It works,
doesn't have any teething problems, but lacks some of the good features
of Win 7.

Timo Pietilä

dannymichel

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Apr 16, 2010, 9:48:54 AM4/16/10
to

2 seems better designed and newer looking, but havent seen much as far
as a difference in features

Dan Mosedale

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Apr 16, 2010, 1:22:26 PM4/16/10
to dev-apps-t...@lists.mozilla.org
On 4/15/10 11:37 PM, Timo Pietilä wrote:
> AFAIK it also has a bug in msf system that corrupts your mails sooner
> or later. If that has been fixed I'm not aware of it.
I'm not aware of such a bug. If you are, have you found or filed it in
Bugzilla?

Thanks,
Dan

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