1370327 - Provide Lightning Beta builds for public testing

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Calendar :: Build Config, enhancement)

Description

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Now that Aurora is dead I had to switch to Thunderbird Beta for testing. But when using an existing profile with Thunderbird Beta or when updating from one Beta build to the next no matching Lightning package will be installed. (Lightning installation happens only when creating a new profile as far as I know.)

Currently I workaround by manually downloading a matching package from https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/calendar/lightning/candidates/ But this is not acceptable for most users.

If you want to have good test coverage on Lightning Beta you need to release Lightning Beta builds on https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/lightning/versions/beta to ensure that they can be found by users and by Thunderbird internal update mechanism.

Comment 1

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Hmm so my impression was that the matching Lightning packaged with Thunderbird is installed when a new version of Thunderbird is downloaded. If that is not the case we should definitely try to fix that. I can surely upload them to AMO as an intermediate workaround.

Comment 2

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

I have to manually download the candidate builds at almost everytime Thunderbird Beta is upgraded.

And I'd like to extend the request to release builds as well. I have now seen various bug reports where Lightning 5.4 is used in Thunderbird 52.4 althought bugfix releases were done with Lightning 5.4.1, 5.4.2, 5.4.3, 5.4.4. But none of the bugfix releases is avaiable from https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/lightning/versions

Comment 3

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Can you try to uninstall Lightning and somehow trigger the reinstall via the distribution folder (possibly it is enough to uninstall and restart)? This way you shouldn't need to upgrade, because Thunderbird will install the matching version automatically.

This of course still means I need to get the betas to AMO, I recently added a few more builds but then got distracted. Thanks for the comment, good reminder :)

Comment 4

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

I've been postponing this long enough that AMO is getting rid of beta versions in Q1. I'm also hitting https://github.com/mozilla/addons/issues/622 which is keeping me from uploading for the time being. I'll push the current versions out as soon as that is done though.

I'll have to find some other place to publish the beta versions going forward. This could possibly still work on addons.thunderbird.net once it is up.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen]  from comment #4)
> I've been postponing this long enough that AMO is getting rid of beta
> versions in Q1. I'm also hitting
> https://github.com/mozilla/addons/issues/622 which is keeping me from
> uploading for the time being. I'll push the current versions out as soon as
> that is done though.

Live per https://github.com/mozilla/addons/issues/622#event-1452866790

> I'll have to find some other place to publish the beta versions going
> forward. This could possibly still work on addons.thunderbird.net once it is up.

Is this something that can be tasked to Geoff and Sancus?

Comment 6

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

My preferred solution would be to add some code to Thunderbird that makes sure we are using the right version of Lightning so that installing an extra version of Lightning is not necessary. This could be a matter of resetting the distro pref at the right time

Providing self-hosted updates does mean additional bandwidth, and we'd need to have the build include the update url and manage the releases there.

Comment 7

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

From Thunderbird 74 onwards Lightning does not exist as a separate add-on but is integrated into Thunderbird.