421041 - Please add component "Extension Tracking" to product "Mozilla Application Suite"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Administration, task)

Description

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008030401 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008030401 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre

Please add component "Extension Tracking" to component "Mozilla Application Suite" to make it easier to track the porting of extensions to Suiterunner (and, eventually, to ulterior Sm versions). I'm willing to work for that component, to which bug 420995 (and its eventual blockers) will be moved.

Firefox already has a similar component. For reasons described at more length under "Additional info" below, I believe the time is right for SeaMonkey to get one.

I suggest a QA Contact of "[e-mail]" (or similar) and, if my request is accepted, I promise to watch it for at least as long as bug 420995 will be ASSIGNED to me.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Additional info
---------------
In view of the considerable differences between Sm1 and Sm2, I expect the porting of Sm1 extensions to Sm2 to be an unusually big job. This job, however, is already underway, even though Sm2 is supposedly not even at the alpha stage yet. Since Sm2 (unlike Sm1) enjoys an add-ons interface similar to Fx & Tb, I also expect that quite a number of extensions will, or at least could, be ported from them to Sm2. In fact that job too has already begun. I believe that having an "Extension Tracking" component in SeaMonkey would not only help keep all this labour away from the "General" component (which, I suppose, is already quite flooded enough as it is), it would also help the people who will have to make the decision to push Suiterunner builds' labels along the road from pre-alpha to alpha to beta to release-candidate to final release.

Comment 1

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Adding to the CC list a few people who I think will be interested. Remove yourself, of course, if I was mistaken.

Comment 2

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

If SeaMonkey is not even in alpha stages, why is this needed? I don't see it serving a useful purpose.

Comment 3

[Philip Chee]

You forgot the gavinbot.

Comment 4

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> If SeaMonkey is not even in alpha stages, why is this needed? I don't see it
> serving a useful purpose.
> 

SeaMonkey 2 is not yet (officially) in the alpha stage, because a lot of work is still to be done on it in a number of areas (such as porting preferences to toolkit and allowing toolbar customization) before it can be declared ready for prime time. However, it is already IMHO far superior to SeaMonkey 1 (which has been released quite some time ago already), if only because Sm2 at last enjoys a "decent" add-ons manager.

Also, porting extensions to Sm2 has already begun, even though that version is officially "pre-alpha": I have installed several extensions which boast "compatibility" with Sm 2.0a1pre, and most of them are working quite satisfactorily. I expect more of them will be ported, but in view of the differences between XPI architecture between Mozilla 1.8.1 and 1.9, and of the Toolkit Transition (between Sm1 and Sm2) I expect that porting to require more work that it usually would, even between two major releases.

By means of meta bug 420995, its eventual blockers, and (hopefully) this component, I want to help achieve the following goals:
- encourage extension authors to port their work to Sm2, and give them a place where the progress of such porting can be centralized;
- give Sm users a central point where the progress of extension porting can be assessed in one eyeblink, by checking the "Depends on" heading" and possibly hoivering their mouse over it;
- help moving away from the "General" components any RFEs or other bugs saying "SeaMonkey would be sooo much better if that extension worked with it";
- ultimately, together with other criteria, help in the long term the Sm Council members judge when it will be time to decide that Sm2 is ripe for alpha, for beta, etc.

All this can be done by keeping bug 420995 and its eventual blockers in the "General" component, but it will increase the labour of triagers, who will have to bypass those bugs when deciding which bugs to triage away to some other component; it will also make the job harder for the people who have already started porting extensions to Sm2, and to the users who would like to track their work -- if this proposed component existed, it would have a QA contact which could be watched, allowing people interested in tracking extensions to easily get bugmail about them.

Comment 5

[Robert Kaiser]

I have no clue why we'd need such a component at the current point in time. I especially, am reluctant to have too many component changes going on before the big bugzilla reorg that will completely restructure the SeaMonkey product.

Comment 6

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

--> WONTFIX for now, as per comment #5.