Lightning 1.0b7 / 1.0 Release planned for September 27th
Philipp Kewisch
Its about time to give you an update on what is planned for the next
release. As you may have noticed, we have had a lot of trouble calling
our releases "beta". For one thing, some users and especially corporate
users are cautious when they read beta and don't see that it has the
same quality as all our other releases. Aside from that we also had
trouble with uploading releases to addons.mozilla.org (they are
automatically marked beta and require admin intervention to make them
public for everyone) and we are constantly in need of new sub-version
numbers. For example, if we want to release a matching build for
Thunderbird 7.0b2, what do we call it? Lightning 1.0 beta 7 beta 1?
Thats too much, do you agree?
To relieve that issue we're going to bite the bullet and call either our
next release or the one after 1.0. Afterwards we can newly decide on
version numbers and I'll tell you one thing: I'm not going to go into
the version number trap again. If at some point the next available
version number is 2.0, then that's the way it is.
===What this means for Localizers?===
We have taken great care to avoid patches with string changes for the
next release. Therefore as it is right now, if you have all strings
translated for Lightning 1.0b5, then you are good to go for the next
release.
According to the l10n dashboard, there are 13 locales with missing
strings. This information is quite old so a lot may have changed in
between, but it would be splendid if all of the remaining locales could
have their strings translated. I will be contacting the localizers
personally to make sure things progress
=== What this means for you? ===
For you? Yes, for you! We need help testing Lightning to make sure there
are no unpleasant surprises in the next two weeks. Now you'll surely
want to know where to get a build compatible with Thunderbird 7.0 Betas.
Unfortunately I must admit, this is not quite ready yet. Our goal is to
automate the release process a bit more, otherwise at least a day of my
time is taken just for producing a full set of release (candidate)
builds. It may easily happen that a detail is forgotten, which will only
make the process more painful.
So what to do in the meantime? Well you have two options. First of all
you could test Thunderbird 8 Prerelease [Tb8] with Lightning 1.0b8pre
[Ltn8]. This may be a different Thunderbird version, but the Lightning
code is the same between those versions.
Then we have the first set of test builds for Thunderbird 7 beta [Tb7]
and Lightning 1.0b7 [Ltn7]. These builds might have their quirks since
not all parts of release automation went well. Please stay tuned, I'll
be posting an update when its advisable to move from testing with
Thunderbird 8 to Thunderbird 7.
=== Conclusion ===
We need you now more than ever to make sure Lightning 1.0 is a success.
This version will likely get more PR than the previous versions so it
would be a pity if it weren't in good shape or needs to be skipped for
an urgent fix. I'm counting on you!
Thanks,
Philipp
[Tb8]
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-earlybird/
[Ltn8]
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-aurora/
[Tb7] http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/download/?product=thunderbird-7.0b2
[Ltn7]
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/tinderbox-builds/comm-beta/
Philipp Kewisch
so if your builds are green then you'll have to be patient, we're
working on gettting l10n builds back on the beta branch.
Philipp