1470730 - Show distribution information in About Thunderbird dialog (e.g. "Flatpak”)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Óvári]

Attachment: LibreOffice About Flatpak version

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180608151520

Steps to reproduce:

Please show that the version of Thunderbird is a “Flatpak version”, via Thunderbird Menu Bar → Help → About Thunderbird. Thank you

https://github.com/flathub/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/issues/38


Actual results:

Attached image is from LibreOffice’s About dialog with green added showing “Flatpak version”. Recommend not having "version" to save translation just "(Flatpak)", to be similar to Thunderbird Daily, i.e.
52.8.0 (Flatpak) (64-bit)

Comment 1

[Óvári]

Attachment: Thunderbird Daily About.png

Replace:
62.0a1 (2018-06-17) (64-bit)
with:
52.8.0 (Flatpak) (64-bit)

Could also extend to the Snap version.
https://snapcraft.io/store
like Firefox:
https://snapcraft.io/firefox

Comment 2

[Matt]

Pardon my ignorance, but is flatpak not a distribution channel.
What is the relevance to this entry? The core application is the same, or should be, regardless of the distribution channel.

Comment 3

[Óvári]

There are some bugs which occur only when the application is distributed as a Flatpak, and don't occur installing using *.deb files. This would help when writing bug reports and enabling the bugs to be reproduced.

For example, “Preview in Web Browser” does not work in Flatpak version
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124998
was not reproduced with Windows 10
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124998#c1
and had Flatpak not been there, the bug report might have been removed as INVALID.

As flatpak sand-boxes applications, this can cause many problems, see
https://github.com/flathub/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/issues/46

Can you please change the status of this issue from UNCONFIRED to NEW?

Thank you

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Rob, is there a way we could know for the About dialog if we are running from flatpak?

It would be useful for bug reports indeed if "flatpak" was indicated in the about dialog.

Comment 5

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Attachment: image.png

It should be showing something...

The Flatpak should be including a "distribution/distribution.ini" file. See https://github.com/flathub/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/blob/master/distribution.ini. The about dialog will display the "id" and "version" values (see screenshot).

[Global]
id=thunderbird-flatpak
version=1.0
about=Mozilla Thunderbird Flatpak

The "about" text should be displayed as well. It's not; so that is a bug.

Comment 6

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Attachment: Bug 1470730 - Display more distribution information in about: dialog. r=darktrojan

The distribution information comes from distribution.ini, which is included
by third party Thunderbird packages such as Flatpaks. The about value is now
properly read and included.

Comment 7

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Attachment: image.png

With the patch in comment 6, and the distribution.ini file from comment 5 in place, this is the resulting about: dialog.

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/e1d227615c9c
Display more distribution information in about: dialog. r=darktrojan

Comment 9

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Comment on attachment 9250736 [details]
Bug 1470730 - Display more distribution information in about: dialog. r=darktrojan

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #):
User impact if declined: Flatpak/Snap repacks are not identified on about:
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.):
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): Low risk, only affects text on about:

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9250736 [details]
Bug 1470730 - Display more distribution information in about: dialog. r=darktrojan

[Triage Comment]
Approved for esr91

Comment 11

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 91.5.0:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr91/rev/9d8637c03884