549286 - Provide comm-1.9.3/mozilla-1.9.3 Sunbird nightly builds

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Calendar :: Build Config, defect)

Description

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Please provide Sunbird nightly builds for comm-central/mozilla-1.9.2 or comm-central/mozilla-central or both.

I think the comm-1.9.1/mozilla-1.9.1 nightly builds can be turned off now. As said several months ago I suggest skipping a faulty Sunbird 1.0b1 release in favor of a stable release.

Comment 1

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Please provide Sunbird nightly builds for comm-central/mozilla-1.9.2 or
> comm-central/mozilla-central or both.
I agree we should just move the Sunbird builds to 1.9.2 to avoid confusion as in archaeopteryx's bug. iirc gozer said that the release builds are totally independent, so we can move the builds without problems. I'll need to doublecheck though.


> I think the comm-1.9.1/mozilla-1.9.1 nightly builds can be turned off now. As
> said several months ago I suggest skipping a faulty Sunbird 1.0b1 release in
> favor of a stable release.
Are the current 1.0b1 pre-builds of Sunbird not stable enough? Putting extra energy in Sunbird now means less time for Lightning, which I don't think we can handle with the few resources we have.

Comment 2

[Philippe M. Chiasson (:gozer)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > Please provide Sunbird nightly builds for comm-central/mozilla-1.9.2 or
> > comm-central/mozilla-central or both.
> I agree we should just move the Sunbird builds to 1.9.2 to avoid confusion as
> in archaeopteryx's bug. iirc gozer said that the release builds are totally
> independent, so we can move the builds without problems. I'll need to
> doublecheck though.

That's correct.

Comment 3

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

gozer, hold up for a moment before you do this. Mark made a valid point about future expectations users might have if Sunbird nightlies are still being built. I'm discussing this with the team.

Comment 4

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Has a discussion be made? Instead of wasting the build cycles on the old 1.9.1 code base I'd rather "waste" them on the 1.9.2 code base. This way you'll get useful testing from the Sunbird nightly users. And if Sunbird l10n builds are switched too we also get builds for localization testing that is not possible yet with Lightning.

Comment 5

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

I didn't get much response when asking the others from the team. On the one hand, Mark is right: Sunbird builds mean build maintenance, users might think we'll be doing release builds, or complain "you have the nightlies, it shouldn't be much work to do a release". Also, we will nevertheless be getting bugs from Sunbird users, so this means extra bug volume.

On the other Hand, I can understand that some people prefer Sunbird for testing, and I'd hate to lose them (Stefan for example). Stefan, is there any specific set of bugs you'd like to see fixed that keep you from using Thunderbird/Lightning for testing?

Maybe we can make it clear that Sunbird nightly builds are totally unsupported by adding a UI visible string to the titlebar (i.e "UNSUPPORTED!"). Also a file named "These builds are unsupported!" on the ftp server might make it obvious for those surfing on the ftp server.

What do you think?

Comment 6

[Graham Perrin]

FWIW a strong 
+1
to providing nightly builds. 

(Thanks to Stefan and others in bug 543744 for steering.)

(In reply to comment #5)
> some people prefer Sunbird for testing

Not only for testing. Sunbird has merits, not least its separation from Thunderbird. Example: here on University of Sussex campus, on IT Services equipment there is:

* Mulberry -minus- calendar
* Microsoft Office -minus- Outlook
* Meeting Maker, but only on demand. 

Sunbird alone is a *very* fine choice where the requirement is to view but not edit shared calendars. (Example: view but not edit room bookings: <http://home.freeman-centre.ac.uk/r/r/gf>.) No risk to data. 

> Maybe we can make it clear that Sunbird nightly builds are totally unsupported

+1

I suggest: 

A) a very short simple statement at the home and download pages 
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/> 
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/download.html#nightly>, 
within each short statement, a link to the relevant point within Calendar FAQ. 

B) bug 553189 - Calendar FAQ should explain Sunbird 0.9, 1.0b1 and nightly builds.

> adding a UI visible string to the titlebar (i.e "UNSUPPORTED!")

-1

It should suffice to make things visible in the 'About Sunbird' dialogue. 

> Also a file named "These builds are unsupported!" on the ftp server 

I'm not sure about that. Browsing the hierarchies, interpreting the code names is already disorienting for some users so I would hesitate before adding more than is absolutely necessary. FWIW I'd prefer the short friendly statement at the Sunbird home page.

Comment 7

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> FWIW a strong 
> +1
> to providing nightly builds. 

When the Sunbird builds get busted (as I'm sure they already are on m-1.9.2) who is going to fix them? Who is going to review the fixes for them?

For example, I work on Thunderbird. In the last couple of months I've probably averaged a couple of hours a week fixing bustages from core changes (and that's just build bustages, not internal bustages that you don't see without running the app).

Whilst moving the hardware is "trivial", I am pointing out that the cost of supporting the builds going forward isn't necessarily trivial.

Not only that, when m-1.9.2 becomes obsolete, who is going to do the work to pull Sunbird onto the next version of core mozilla code (at which point I expect there may be a lot out of date and broken).

Obviously, if some set of people want to step up and help maintain Sunbird (as has already been suggested) then they are welcome to. However that hasn't happened and as has already been explained, Lightning itself needs more developers and doesn't want to spend time supporting Sunbird.

> > adding a UI visible string to the titlebar (i.e "UNSUPPORTED!")
> 
> -1
> 
> It should suffice to make things visible in the 'About Sunbird' dialogue. 

IMHO your suggestions are not enough. If you're going to produce something unsupported you need shout it *everywhere*, otherwise you're still going to get people expecting builds to work.

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(I should have said; as you may have worked out, I'm not actually part of the calendar team, however, I'm providing comments based on my experience from working with Thunderbird and as you can tell, I believe there will be a non-trivial cost to the calendar team to keep sunbird builds going).

Comment 9

[Graham Perrin]

IMHO (user point of view) shouting *anything* UPPERCASE AN WITH EXCLAMATION MARK! in the title bar isn't good for the brand. Shouting tends to be ignored, repetition tends to be ignored, repetition tends to be ignored, 

Maybe have in the title bar,

(unsupported build)

Comment 10

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

> Not only for testing. Sunbird has merits, not least its separation from
> Thunderbird.
Given the past decision to drop Sunbird, if at all, I won't support any other reasoning than using Sunbird builds for testing. We've decided as a team there are not enough resources to support Sunbird and I think we should stand behind this decision. Supporting nightly builds would be counterproductive.

I agree to Mark that supporting Sunbird nightlys is work. Although I haven't had the feeling that keeping the builds working was much work (this may be because ssitter has been taking care, not me), keeping the app up to date is the far bigger problem. Without clear leadership, there is no way that Sunbird will change to a newer branch when 1.9.2 is obsolete. I'd also like to know how you (Graham, Stefan) think we can solve the review problem?


> It should suffice to make things visible in the 'About Sunbird' dialogue. 
The about dialog is not really "user visible". Often we get bug reports "I am using Sunbird, my Problem is xxx". Even if the user does provide version info, they almost never include a build id. Therefor the chance that the user has looked into About Sunbird is near zero.

Comment 11

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Sunbird 1.0b1 release is scheduled today. Regardless of what we decide for this bug, I think we should disable comm-1.9.1 builds since they are obsolete. If we decide to provide 1.9.2 builds we can quickly re-enable the builds.

We might also want to remove the 1.0b2pre builds that are based on 1.9.1 since they are not much different from the release builds anyway.

I'm doing step 1 now and will follow with step 2 soon.

Comment 12

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

soon = I'll wait at least until Monday

Comment 13

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Ping? Nightly users of Sunbird are still stuck on 1.9.1 branch, therefore the QA work is currently useless (see e.g. Bug 265971 Comment 42, Bug 321535 Comment 22, Bug 325137 Comment 72). It would be more helpful if we could provide them with 1.9.2 builds for testing. Of course this assumes that you still want help and QA from Sunbird users.

Comment 14

[Damian Szczepanik]

> It would be more helpful if we could
> provide them with 1.9.2 builds for testing. Of course this assumes that you
> still want help and QA from Sunbird users.

That would be efficient to have builds for testing fixes on Sunbird.

Philipp?

Comment 15

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

I'm still waiting on a reply to some points in comment 10, and an Email from Stefan. I would love to have further help and QA from Sunbird users, but if a bug shows up, you'll have to see if it also shows up in Lightning (unless its obvious, maybe).

Given we make it clear (add some sort of "unsupported" label to title bar, ftp folder, about dialog) that the Sunbird nightlys are unsupported, I guess I could live with producing nightlys for now. We might have to reconsider if we need the capacity for testing tasks. We also need a solution for what happens when the builds break. For this I'd like to hear an answer to my comment 10: How do we handle reviews? Who will do the build patches? Since this is a community project, I sure can't stop anyone from posting Sunbird build patches, but having them reviewed is a real Problem.

Comment 16

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Not necessary anymore.