1552725 - On updates, load a page with what's new

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Mentioned in bug 1134760, there is an interest to have updates load "What's New", presumably in a tab

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Actually, I'd like to just open the page in the browser. That way people can really explore the thing, there is not the complaints that people can't find their mail tab (IIRC we had bugs for this back when we had what's new in a tab), and - it's an ample opportunity for people to surf on in to the donate page. They can't do that inside Thunderbird.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Yes, thanks for correcting that. I wasn't ignoring you - sometimes I just cannot read :)

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Would be nice to do for 68

Comment 4

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

I have a feeling this would be happening if it weren't for this error:

Unable to find update: TypeError: um.getUpdateAt(...) is null specialTabs.js:885
    showWhatsNewPage chrome://messenger/content/specialTabs.js:885
    openSpecialTabsOnStartup chrome://messenger/content/specialTabs.js:652
    OnLoadMessenger chrome://messenger/content/msgMail3PaneWindow.js:522
    onload chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul:1

Calling specialTabs.showWhatsNewPage() manually (i.e. not immediately after start-up) works fine, and the what's new page redirects to the release notes. This is the URL that loads (or would if it weren't broken) after updating from 60.0b9 to 67.0b3:
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/67.0beta/releasenotes/?uri=/thunderbird/whatsnew/&locale=en-GB&version=67.0&channel=beta&os=Linux&buildid=20190507203408

Comment 5

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: 1552725-active-update-1.diff

Our update code is out-of-date compared to Firefox's. This fixes that.

There may be more missing pieces, but if I disable these two checks (which would be true if there's a real update), and put a fake active-update.xml in the build directory a "Welcome to Daily" page opens at start-up.

Comment 6

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Comment on attachment 9070209 [details] [diff] [review]
1552725-active-update-1.diff

Robert, do you have any advice when it comes to testing this part of the code? I figured out that this patch was needed by starting with a v60 beta and having it auto-update to a v67 beta, but that doesn't seem ideal.

Comment 7

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

That code is notoriously difficult to test but I did add a test for it recently.
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/tests/browser/whats_new_page

I'm not sure how it would best fit in with your available test harnesses but if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 9070209 [details] [diff] [review]
1552725-active-update-1.diff

Review of attachment 9070209 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

How can I test this?

Comment 9

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

You can trick the code into thinking an update has happened. Copy this file in objdir/dist/bin/updates.xml, set app.update.postupdate to true and mailnews.start_page_override.mstone to something less than it is, and restart.

I don't think this patch is even necessary, as doing the above works even without it. But we might as well keep up with Firefox on this.

I've been trying to get Robert's automated test going but I think it will require some changes to how we run mochitest first.

Comment 10

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: 1552725-whatsnew-in-browser-1.diff

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 9070209 [details] [diff] [review]
1552725-active-update-1.diff

Review of attachment 9070209 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

How can I test this?

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 9073773 [details] [diff] [review]
1552725-whatsnew-in-browser-1.diff

Review of attachment 9073773 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Looks good, thx! r=mkmelin

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Ryan: as an idea, I wonder if we could find someone in the community who would like to take on implementing (and/or maintaining) a what's new for nightly. Bugzilla has a pretty nice API so the bugs landed for daily could be listed automatically for such a page, if we'd want to.

Comment 14

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #11)

How can I test this?

See comment 9.

Comment 15

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yeah I tested earlier. It just decided to send the old bugzilla saved comment again.

Comment 16

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/94f38909bfab
Copy Firefox code for getting the active update. r=mkmelin
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/840547c2b320
Open "what's new" page in browser instead of a tab. r=mkmelin

Comment 17

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Comment on attachment 9073773 [details] [diff] [review]
1552725-whatsnew-in-browser-1.diff

This was wanted on 68 but never uplifted. Probably my fault. :-/

Comment 18

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

TB 68.0 ESR:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr68/rev/a0053aaa30eebeee71d09a4542878e35dec3341d
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr68/rev/4d3376af9cdffc2d05bb3cdb69be423e0057ce91