[Pkg-mozext-maintainers] Status Quo on Thunderbird 78.x

[Carsten Schoenert]

Hi there,

MZLNA has released Thunderbird 78.2.1 just a few days ago [1]. There 
aren't big changes in this release, except that with this release the 
integrated OpenPGP feature is now enabled by default.

I've prepared and uploaded this release while the past weekend to 
experimental again. As also version 68.12.0 was released a few days 
before 78.2.1 the next release will be 78.3.0 of course. With that 
version MZLNA will enable automatic version upgrade again. User of 
68.12.0 will then be able to do upgrades to the new ESR series.

I plan to upload a version 78.3.0 to unstable instead to experimental.
I'm working with the 78.x version since the early beginning and haven't 
covered big issues until now. But I'm unable to test all common cases 
people will have. So again this is a call for testing of the version in 
experimental.

* How does a upgrade work for you?
* Do we need some special explaining through the NEWS file?
* Is still something broken in way that we shouldn't do a upload to 
unstable now?
* Need we some more documentation on the Thunderbird wiki site?
* Any problems on OpenPGP still around?

The situation on the extensions side isn't still good yet. So far all 
Add-Ons are broken except some few. I know only of TbSync as a packaged 
Add-On that is working. If you maintain a AddOn that is compatible with 
TB 78.x you might want to have a look at the packaging of the TbSync and 
related packages [2] to see how we get these Add-Ons working in the 
Debian universe.
The packaging isn't technically perfect for sure, but they are working 
for an end user.

The situation on the buildds [3] is also something that needs some 
attention. I was able to fix the build on mips64el but ppc64el [4] and 
s390x [5] are still failing.

On ppc64el it seems some rustc specific problem, I'm unable to solve 
this but I hope that Mike will do this as part of his involvement to 
Mozilla.
It might be that I need to pass some configuration options for ppc64el 
though the file mozconfig.default. Until now no additional flags are 
added to that arch. OTOH this arch has build successful until 78.1.0, so 
I tend to say that this regression is rustc version related.

s390x is kicked out by buildds because the linker seems to take longer 
than the allowed 150min "inactivity". The current firefox package 
doesn't have that problem, if someone has some idea what potential extra 
build flags are required I'm happy to take these.

Unfortunately I did had any luck to claim a porterbox to test something out.

So there are two option finally, 1) disable the two problematic 
architectures in the end, or 2) ask the RT later to allow the partial 
transition of TB to testing later. Any help is appreciated!

Thanks!


[1] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/78.2.1/releasenotes/
[2] https://salsa.debian.org/webext-team/tbsync/-/tree/debian/experimental
 
https://salsa.debian.org/webext-team/eas4tbsync/-/tree/debian/experimental
 
https://salsa.debian.org/webext-team/dav4tbsync/-/tree/debian/experimental
[3] 
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=thunderbird&suite=experimental
[4] 
https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=thunderbird&arch=ppc64el&ver=1%3A78.2.1-1&stamp=1598806630&raw=0
[5] 
https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=thunderbird&arch=s390x&ver=1%3A78.2.1-1&stamp=1598820660&raw=0

-- 
Regards
Carsten Schoenert