1666242 - [meta] comm-central as a branch

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Build Config, enhancement)

Description

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

See https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2018-October/006205.html for the basic plan. Let's make this happen.

Comment 1

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Adding Connor to the CC list - we should probably talk through some things before going too much further.

Comment 2

[:glob ✱]

The tl;dr proposal is:

So for the location there are at least three options:

A: branch in the mozilla-central repository
B: branch in the mozilla-unified repository
C: branch in a repository elsewhere

Greg responded to this proposal in October 2018: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/2018-October/006212.html, and I don't see any follow-ups from his authoritative response:

Regarding this proposal, I'm going to rule out adding Thunderbird code to
mozilla-central (A) at this point in time. People (and automated tools)
expect mozilla-central to have a single DAG head / branch and I think
adding a 2nd head/branch will cause problems. Plus there's a practical
concern of not wanting Thunderbird's code bloating the size of the
repository.

Because Thunderbird has separate project governance and support
requirements from Firefox (AFAIK), I think we should also rule out adding
Thunderbird code to mozilla-unified (B). I'm not super opposed to adding
Thunderbird code into mozilla-unified eventually if it makes sense. But I
don't think we should do it initially.

I think this new Thunderbird repository should live on its own, independent
from the Firefox repositories. Whether changesets should be in the
"default" branch or in some other Mercurial branch (so when changesets are
pulled into a Firefox repository you know they belong to Thunderbird), I
don't have a strong opinion. Having them named differently is more
compatible with a world where you are pulling Firefox and Thunderbird
repositories into the same repo. But having different branches/names also
introduces additional workflow requirements (people need to know to switch
between branches - and since we don't use Mercurial branches heavily in
Firefox land, people may not know how to do that).

As the relevant Mozilla manager now, I agree with all of the points that Greg made and too am going to rule out both (A) and (B), leaving (C) branch in a repository elsewhere as the outcome of these changes.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes, I think we've been working on that assumption, basically a comm-central2 repository, which would be a mozilla-central clone + in addition carrying the "comm/default" branch (and maybe other comm/* branches in he future).