417925 - Issues with cross platform interoperability, initialization and switching using shared profile information

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 352543

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, defect)

Description

[arjun mehta]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: 2007102304

After installing the Lightning extension of the current operating system into thunderbird (ie: lightning-0.7-tb-win.xpi when in Windows, lightning-0.7-tb-macosx.xpi when in OS X), lightning will operate as expected.

However, when switching between operating systems on a single machine while using the same profile in both/all operating systems, thunderbird will not load/initialize the lightning interface properly in the operating system that is not the operating system in which the most recent OS specific instance of the extension was installed, even if it has already been installed for that operating system.

Example: I install Lightning using the windows version in windows. It works as expected.
Then I boot into OS X. Install the OS X version of Lightning. It works fine.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Ensure that the same profile file is being used. Edit the profiles.ini file for each OS version of Thunderbird (found in your default Thunderbird application data directory) so that each OS shares all the same profile data.
2. Install Lightning extension into Thunderbird using the windows version in Windows (lightning-0.7-tb-win.xpi). It works as expected.
3. Boot into OS X. Install the OS X version of Lightning extension (lightning-0.7-tb-macosx.xpi). It works fine and maintains all profile data, calendars and tasks set up in windows as expected.
4. Boot back into windows, open thunderbird, and notice Lightning is not loading properly, all calendar data is missing, the UI is garbled, or loaded incorrectly, etc.
5. Install the windows version of the extension again(lightning-0.7-tb-win.xpi).  Everything works as expected again until...
6. Boot back into OS X, open thunderbird and notice the same problems as experienced in Windows. Reinstall the OS X version of the extension. All is fine again and all profile data is restored as expected.
7. One must reinstall the OS specific package in order for lightning to work properly in a specific operating system every time the switch is made.
Actual Results:  
Currently, as a result of this, in order to get lightning to work properly between operating systems, using the same profile information, it must be reinstalled every time the switch is made, using the OS specific extension package, otherwise the UI is garbled and information is not loaded into lightning (ie. Lightning becomes dysfunctional.

Once it is reinstalled after switching operating systems, it will work as expected in the specific operating system that it was installed in, until the other OS specific installation is installed over it.

Expected Results:  
Lightning should automatically detect the OS it is working in and use that version of the extension, so when loading Thunderbird between operating systems, using the same profile data, the switch is seamless and does not require a reinstallation every time Thunderbird is loaded in a different OS!

I am using a Macbook Pro, with Bootcamp installed (hence the switching between OS X and Vista). Though I am assuming that this problem would reoccur when switching between all OSes: Linux, OS X and Windows, though I have not confirmed it with Linux.

Profile data is shared using a common FAT32 partition, that Windows and OS X both have access to, and Thunderbird in both operating systems has access to, so that there is only one profile folder shared between the two operating systems and one location for configuration information.

I have tried the same thing with Sunbird but Sunbird works just as expected when switching between Operating systems and using the same profile data.

Refer to the URL provided for more information.

Comment 1

[arjun mehta]

Sorry please ignore the "Example" part before the Steps to reproduce

Comment 2

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

This is not the proper way to put together a cross-platform package. There are some guides on developer.mozilla.org on how this can be done, but its not officially supported.

There are also some tutorials on mozillazine.

In short:

* unpackage windows xpi
* mkdir platform/<platform id windows>/
* mv components platform/<platform id windows>/
* unpackage mac xpi
* mkdir platform/<platform id mac>/
* mv components patform/<platform id mac>/

Comment 3

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

See <http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Ssitter/UnifiedLightning> for a HowTo repackage Lightning for Linux and Windows. You can extend this example for the Mac OS X binaries.

Comment 4

[arjun mehta]

That solves it, great!
I guess in the future Lightning will be packaged as one then?
Thanks Stefan and Phillip.

Comment 5

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

There will be no joint packaging until bug 352543 is fixed