Open Bug 1469516 Opened 7 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Move Thunderbird to UXP platform

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, enhancement)

enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: oldcoder, Unassigned)

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(2 files)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0 Build ID: 20180514124554 Steps to reproduce: Steps to reproduce are as follows: 1. Assess Rust objectively. Observe the inability to build Thunderbird, especially stable copies of the program, offline. 2. Assess web extensions objectively. Observe the loss of functionality inherent in the move to this framework. I'm writing tonight to offer a proposal that's simple and that will work: Move the project to the UXP platform. Actual results: This is covered in the "should have happened" section. Expected results: Thunderbird should continue (or have continued) to build long-term without Rust; not just temporarily in ESR. It should continue (or have continued) to support standard, i.e., real, Mozilla extensions as well. Long-term; not just temporarily in ESR. The proposal suggested here is to move Thunderbird to the UXP platform, which the submitter has tested personally for 6 months and which seems to work quite well for browser purposes. UXP supports Firefox browser builds. It should support Thunderbird ESR with relatively little work. In the event of a move, Rust Thunderbird would come to an end. Or Thunderbird ESR would move to UXP and continue there permanently while Rust Thunderbird continued on its own path. The submitter's assessment, which may be either correct or incorrect, is that UXP represents the future for both Thunderbird and Seamonkey. BTW Does anybody have an email address for anybody at Seamonkey? The submitter tried to post this proposal on the Seamonkey Support List, but it was spam-filtered. Brazilian L*sbian Lover spam seems to be accepted at Seamonkey, about 15 posts about the subject, but the UXP proposal hasn't been allowed into that list. The UXP platform calls for, regardless, an objective assessment as a possible alternative to the current path for Thunderbird. If the decision is made to follow Firefox Quantum, so be it. However, the FOSS world needs a mail client of the quality of Thunderbird that is portable, that can be built *offline* by distro maintainers, and that supports extensions of the type that distro maintainers expect to work. Not web extensions that can't do jack shitake mushrooms with disk files. Seriously, is it permitted to say WTF here? If not, feel free to delete this paragraph. Thunderbird is the premiere FOSS mail client. You know that it's the best that there is. But Rust and web extensions are potentially the end of the project as the leader. The UXP proposal shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It isn't a given that Thunderbird needs to follow Firefox down a path that more than one distro maintainer feels is a miscalculation.
P.S. This bug report was submitted, of course, using a browser that was built on the proposed platform; i.e., UXP. It's basically Firefox, reasonably up to date but without Rust. Both standard extensions and, to an extent, web extensions are supported.
See main comments for discussion related to the screenshot and its relevance to the UXP Thunderbird port.
Thunderbird hasn't been ported to UXP yet, so I don't have a screenshot of its appearance in that framework. However, I've attached a screenshot which shows a web browser assembled by myself, Albus Luna, that is based on UXP. Albus Luna is a cross between Pale Moon and recent Firefoxes with support for modern JS and SSL standards as well as genuine Firefox extensions. Rust Firefox can't claim the same level of functionality as Albus Luna. UXP Thunderbird is expected, similarly, to be superior to Rust Thunderbird. Thunderbird ESR (omitting Rust) will probably plug right into UXP and work as well as Albus Luna. If there is no group effort to make this happen, I'll probably attempt the port myself in 2019. One possible working name for UXP Thunderbird is Superchicken. The name is trademarked in TV series contexts, but there may not be a conflict with its usage in FOSS browser projects. K9 Mail, an Android email program which is apparently based on Thunderbird, may be a precedent. K9 is, of course, a character from Dr. Who.
I've ported Thunderbird 52 ESR to UXP-git. It seems to work pretty well. If you're interested in the details, the following link redirects to a page which provides them: http://thunderbird.oldcoder.org/ I've got what I needed: a version of Thunderbird that supports legacy extensions, that doesn't need Rust, and that's based on a maintained codebase which will continue to exist. I'm happy with the new version. It'll probably become the default email client for my Linux distro. This probably closes the thread. The offer to work with upstream on a branch of this type remains; feel free to contact me for more information.
Severity: normal → enhancement
Summary: Move to UXP platform → Move Thunderbird to UXP platform

This is an update 3 years later. It summarizes developments, deprecates one link, and provides another.

I ultimately discontinued the Thunderbird fork linked 3 years ago because better alternatives appeared. In particular, Icedove-UXP from the Hyperbola group.

In Spring 2021 (about 5 months before this post) I assembled a UXP Browser Bundle. The bundle included UXP ports of Thunderbird (Icedove-UXP), Classic Firefox (my own Albus Luna), pre-Quantum Firefox (Iceweasel-UXP), Seamonkey (Blue Gorilla), Netscape (derived from Blue Gorilla), and Chatzilla (Ambassador). A single command could be used to build all 6 programs.

The bundle has been tested for some months now and a website is up. So, for distro maintainers and/or end users who'd like to use XUL extensions, here is the current link:

https://albusluna.com/

Severity: normal → S3
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