1173888 - The lightning addon for thunderbird will not install on version 38.0.1

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Calendar :: General, defect)

Description

[technomancer]

Attachment: lightning.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150602115007

Steps to reproduce:

Updated Thunderbird via my package manager, Thunderbird did the addon update check and Lightning failed.


Actual results:

Thunderbird marked Lightning as being incompatible, and it has been disabled. 
Checking the Thunderbird addons page indicates that Lightning cannot be installed on my current version.


Expected results:

A new Lightning addon should have been pushed out to the Thunderbird addon repository, or the current addon should continue to work.

Comment 1

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

What Linux distro are you using? We haven't officially released Thunderbird 38, therefore I wasn't prepared to have Lightning on AMO yet. I'll see if I can do this soon, but it has to go through review first.

You can get the candidate build from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/4.0.0.1-candidates/build1/

Comment 2

[technomancer]

Ah, I see. I use Arch Linux. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. Thank you for a prompt reply. Downloading the linked .xpi file worked as expected.

Comment 3

[Evangelos Foutras]

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] from comment #1)
> What Linux distro are you using? We haven't officially released Thunderbird
> 38, therefore I wasn't prepared to have Lightning on AMO yet.

Thunderbird 38.0.1 was available for download on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ at the time we packaged it for Arch Linux. Does that not count as officially released?

Comment 4

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

I admit its unfortunate, even some folks from the drivers team were surprised the website is already live. We haven't enabled updates via the AUS update channel, so mozilla.org build users are not getting these updates yet.

I'll make sure to upload Lightning 4.0 on AMO today, I hope I can find a reviewer before the weekend. I'll also discuss this with drivers to make sure its more obvious next time.

Comment 5

[Evangelos Foutras]

Thanks for trying to get Lightning on AMO. It's also unfortunate that we didn't include Lightning in the Arch Linux package downstream; that would have provided a smooth transition for its users. (I originally misunderstood what a distribution extension was and then couldn't find a way to ship the respective locales for it.)

Comment 6

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Evangelos, anything I can do aside from bug 1173973 to make it easier for ArchLinux?

Comment 7

[Evangelos Foutras]

My only obstacle is finding a way to provide locales for Lightning. Once that's resolved, I am planning to push an updated package that includes Lightning, with the following instructions for people who have already upgraded to 38.0.1:

   The thunderbird 38.0.1-1 package did not include the Lightning
   calendar extension. Due to this omission it will not be installed
   automatically, even though it is included in this package update.

   To correct this and receive the add-on, please use the Config Editor
   in Thunderbird to set extensions.lastAppVersion to "38.0.0" and then
   restart Thunderbird.

Comment 8

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

As far as I know the auto-install of Lightning through the distribution extension will only happen on major updates (e.g. 31 -> 38). Before you include that note please check if that will actually fix it, or if you need to set lastAppVersion to something like 37.0 or 31.7.0.

Comment 9

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

For future minor versions like 4.0.01 -> 4.0.1 we will be using AMO for updates. I might file a bug to consider updating distribution extensions even for minor updates, but the decision for this is in the addons manager reviewers, which is common for Firefox and Thunderbird.

Comment 10

[Evangelos Foutras]

I have confirmed that setting extensions.lastAppVersion to "38.0.0" is sufficient to trigger the add-on installation. However, I haven't checked what happens if a previous Lightning version is installed.

By the way, if Lightning remains available through AMO perhaps it is unnecessary to also include it in downstream Linux distro packages. Is the purpose of shipping it as a distribution extension to have it installed by default for new users or does it serve other purposes as well?

Comment 11

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

The goal is to avoid issues with upgrades between Thunderbird versions. In the past we've had a lot of negative reviews, because Lightning somehow did not get updated together with Thunderbird, or somehow users managed to install and old Lightning with a new Thunderbird and everything looked broken. Its also a good first step to make Lightning a more integrated part of Thunderbird.

This bug kind of confirms it, Lightning is not on AMO yet and we have an unhappy user :)

Comment 12

[Guido Zoellner]

I had the same issue with the Thunderbird upgrade from 31.7.0 to 38.0.1 on Arch Linux.

The first thing that surprised me was that Lightning was not included, as I had read several announcements that Thunderbird 38 had been released with Lightning now included by default.

The second thing that surprised me was that the current Lightning Add-on was incompatible.

I am not entirely sure yet what this default inclusion of Lightning means for future Lightning updates and what the relation is of such inclusion and the Add-on, so maybe that could be communicated more clearly to the users.

Anyways, for the time being, downgrading in Arch Linux to the previous Thunderbird 31.7.0 fixed the problem for me.

I am glad to see that this issue is already being dealt with so quickly, this is very useful :)

Comment 14

[Kent James (:rkent)]

We're hoping to use distributed extensions as a way to balance complexity with completeness in future versions of Thunderbird, with Lightning as the initial prototype. It's turned out to have more pitfalls than we expected, but hopefully we are working our way through them. We'd appreciate any comments on how to do this better.

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Calendar 4.0.0.1 is now up on AMO.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/lightning/

Comment 16

[Guido Zoellner]

Confirmed that the Lightning Add-on v4.0.0.1 is working with the current Thunderbird 38.0.1 package in Arch Linux. What a swift troubleshooting, thank you!