Integrating popular and useful extensions into TB
At today's TB Council meeting, we discussed the options how to deal with
breaking addons.
One suggestion by Wayne that many liked was to integrate popular and
useful extensions into TB core. They should contain functionality that
is closely related to Thunderbird core, be very useful, and be very popular.
A good starting point are the list of the most popular 10 or so extensions.
Another hint are extensions that large enterprise deployments consider
vital, e.g. IMAP folder sharing to allow for vacation replacement.
Here's a filtered list of the most popular addons:
Name Userbase AMO URL
importexporttools 4,02%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/324492
lookout 2,11% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4433
enigmail 1,69% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/71
manually-sort-folders 1,42%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/15102
compactheader 1,36% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564
extra-folder-columns 1,27%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/9716
quicktext 0,97% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/640
gcontactsync 0,90% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/8451
signature-switch 0,88%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/611
remove-duplicate-messages-alte 0,72%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4654
send-later-3 0,70% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/195275
gmail-conversation-view 0,62%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/54035
mail-merge 0,60% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/47144
Here, "Userbase" means the percentage of all TB users that have this
particular addon installed. That means e.g. 1 in 166 users have "mail
redirect" installed. There may be many more users who would like to use
this feature, but don't know that the extension exists, and more that
would find that feature useful, but don't know that something like this
exists. So, we cannot just take the raw numbers, but also need to
consider the usefulness for our users in general.
Please discuss each addon in its own thread. To help finding the thread,
please start the subject with "Integrating"
Ben
One thing we need to keep in mind is that each additional add-on integrated is a maintenance burden. We will be obligated to keep the feature even if the add-on developer doesn’t want to support the feature any longer.
Did you also discuss the possibility of providing WebExtension apis so that the top 10 addons can continue to exist?
Philipp
On 6. Dec 2017, at 11:20 PM, Ben Bucksch ben.bucksch@beonex.com wrote:
At today's TB Council meeting, we discussed the options how to deal with breaking addons.
One suggestion by Wayne that many liked was to integrate popular and useful extensions into TB core. They should contain functionality that is closely related to Thunderbird core, be very useful, and be very popular.
A good starting point are the list of the most popular 10 or so extensions.
Another hint are extensions that large enterprise deployments consider vital, e.g. IMAP folder sharing to allow for vacation replacement.
Here's a filtered list of the most popular addons:
Name Userbase AMO URL
importexporttools 4,02% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/324492
lookout 2,11% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4433
enigmail 1,69% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/71
manually-sort-folders 1,42% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/15102
compactheader 1,36% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564
extra-folder-columns 1,27% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/9716
quicktext 0,97% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/640
gcontactsync 0,90% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/8451
signature-switch 0,88% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/611
remove-duplicate-messages-alte 0,72% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4654
send-later-3 0,70% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/195275
gmail-conversation-view 0,62% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/54035
mail-merge 0,60% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/47144
Here, "Userbase" means the percentage of all TB users that have this particular addon installed. That means e.g. 1 in 166 users have "mail redirect" installed. There may be many more users who would like to use this feature, but don't know that the extension exists, and more that would find that feature useful, but don't know that something like this exists. So, we cannot just take the raw numbers, but also need to consider the usefulness for our users in general.
Please discuss each addon in its own thread. To help finding the thread, please start the subject with "Integrating"
Ben
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net
SURPRISE!SURPRISE!?
Suggestion for add-on authors wishing to be compatible with
Thunderbird 59: Wait!. The fix for bug 1414398
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1414398 (see above)
will arrive soon. It's doubtful whether bug 1419145
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1419145 will be fixed,
but bug 1418914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1418914
will most likely be fixed and then inline options can be achieved via
an embedded WebExtension.
I was hoping the changes will make it not necessary to include WebExt apis!?
Is TB moving to that as a MUST, so addons for TB59 and beyond will NOT
work without WebExt apis?
That will kill very much addons, another big problem for a bright TB future!
On 06.12.17 23:43, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
Did you also discuss the possibility of providing WebExtension apis so
that the top 10 addons can continue to exist?
Philipp
The plan is that old style add-ons will be supported in Thunderbird 59, but
they do most likely need updating to really work. Some features, like the
below "inline options" feature, might not make it (For inline options, there
might exist a WebExtension api you can use to implement a similar feature).
-Magnus
On 07-12-2017 01:35, neandr wrote:
SURPRISE!SURPRISE!?
Suggestion for add-on authors wishing to be compatible with Thunderbird
59: Wait!. The fix for bug 1414398
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1414398 (see above) will
arrive soon. It's doubtful whether bug 1419145
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1419145 will be fixed, but
bug 1418914 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1418914 will
most likely be fixed and then inline options can be achieved via an
embedded WebExtension.
I was hoping the changes will make it not necessary to include WebExt apis!?
Is TB moving to that as a MUST, so addons for TB59 and beyond will NOT work
without WebExt apis?
That will kill very much addons, another big problem for a bright TB future!
On 06.12.17 23:43, Philipp Kewisch wrote:
Did you also discuss the possibility of providing WebExtension apis so that
the top 10 addons can continue to exist?
Philipp
I'd like to add that I don't think integrating the add-ons as add-ons is
necessarily a good idea. For popular features, I do support moving those
features to core, and certainly welcome add-on authors to keep maintaining
their feature there. For good code, moving it to core is not likely to be
significant work, at least compared to alternatives. I think it's basically a
requirement, because if the code lives elsewhere, localization and other
coordinated efforts can't be made to work in a reasonable manner.
-Magnus
On 07-12-2017 00:20, Ben Bucksch wrote:
At today's TB Council meeting, we discussed the options how to deal with
breaking addons.
One suggestion by Wayne that many liked was to integrate popular and useful
extensions into TB core. They should contain functionality that is closely
related to Thunderbird core, be very useful, and be very popular.
A good starting point are the list of the most popular 10 or so extensions.
Another hint are extensions that large enterprise deployments consider
vital, e.g. IMAP folder sharing to allow for vacation replacement.
Here's a filtered list of the most popular addons:
Name Userbase AMO URL
importexporttools 4,02%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/324492
lookout 2,11% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4433
enigmail 1,69% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/71
manually-sort-folders 1,42%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/15102
compactheader 1,36% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564
extra-folder-columns 1,27%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/9716
quicktext 0,97% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/640
gcontactsync 0,90% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/8451
signature-switch 0,88% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/611
remove-duplicate-messages-alte 0,72%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4654
send-later-3 0,70% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/195275
gmail-conversation-view 0,62%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/54035
mail-merge 0,60% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/47144
Here, "Userbase" means the percentage of all TB users that have this
particular addon installed. That means e.g. 1 in 166 users have "mail
redirect" installed. There may be many more users who would like to use this
feature, but don't know that the extension exists, and more that would find
that feature useful, but don't know that something like this exists. So, we
cannot just take the raw numbers, but also need to consider the usefulness
for our users in general.
Please discuss each addon in its own thread. To help finding the thread,
please start the subject with "Integrating"
Ben
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net
I'd like to offer some perspective on this as an author of one of the
add-ons on the list (Send Later, 11th most popular).
In my experience, maintaining core Thunderbird code is a huge pain in
the neck.
The code base is huge and convoluted, the mixture of different
technologies (C++, JavaScript, others) makes things cumbersome, much of
the code is crap and unpleasant to work with, the build process --
although it is getting better -- is cumbersome, it takes a long time to
build and takes up a huge amount of disk space, incremental builds
frequently fail due to other people's changes and force a rebuild from
scratch, writing test cases is unpleasant and complex, when I do take
the time to make and submit fixes to other people's code in the code
base my fixes are frequently ignored or I'm told they won't be accepted
unless I also submit unit tests (as an open-source author of many
software packages, I never demand that someone submitting fixes to me
also write test cases; if they go through significant time and effort to
identity the root cause of a bug and provide a fix, I owe it to them to
meet them halfway and do the tests if I think they're necessary), it
frequently takes many months to a fix to make it from being committed to
being released to the world, making changes to the code base frequently
requires negotiation, bargaining, and collaboration with people who do
not always have the time to respond promptly and do not always
contribute constructively, etc., etc.
I've thousands of dollars in donations for Send Later, but I assure that
the amount of money I've made is not nearly enough to compensate me for
all the time I've spent working on it. I don't have a lot of free time
in my life (massive understatement). I want Send Later to keep working
because I, personally, use it on a regular basis.
To be sure, there are benefits to functionality being in the Thunderbird
core code, but it is not at all clear to me that the benefits outweigh
the many costs, for someone (like me) who has extremely limited time to
contribute.
As someone who has extremely limited time, certainly not enough time to
be a "full-fledged" Thunderbird developer who works on the code base
enough to obviate most of the difficulties enumerated above, the path of
least resistance to keep Send Later working, for me, is going to mean
keeping it as an add-on and making whatever fixes are necessary to keep
it compatible as Thunderbird evolves.
I don't think you guys have the manpower and resources to integrate all
these add-ons into Thunderbird yourself. Let me be clear: if you /do/
have the manpower and resources to do that, and you want to integrate
Send Later into Thunderbird and take on the responsibility for
maintaining it moving forward, I am /100% on-board with that/ and will
gladly give up my job of maintaining the add-on (and the donations that
come with it) for the sake of reclaiming time in my life.
But like I said, I don't think you have the manpower and resources to do
that. If I'm right, then let me suggest an alternative. Rather than
trying to integrate these add-ons into the Thunderbird code base, offer
to assist the maintainers of these add-ons by doing the minimal work
necessary to get each add-on "over the hump" and compatible with
Thunderbird moving forward, and then, having done that work, let the
maintainer of the add-on continue to maintain it as an add-on.
jik
On 12/6/17 5:20 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
At today's TB Council meeting, we discussed the options how to deal
with breaking addons.
One suggestion by Wayne that many liked was to integrate popular and
useful extensions into TB core. They should contain functionality that
is closely related to Thunderbird core, be very useful, and be very
popular.
A good starting point are the list of the most popular 10 or so
extensions.
Another hint are extensions that large enterprise deployments consider
vital, e.g. IMAP folder sharing to allow for vacation replacement.
Here's a filtered list of the most popular addons:
Name Userbase AMO URL
importexporttools 4,02%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/324492
lookout 2,11% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4433
enigmail 1,69% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/71
manually-sort-folders 1,42%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/15102
compactheader 1,36%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564
extra-folder-columns 1,27%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/9716
quicktext 0,97% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/640
gcontactsync 0,90% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/8451
signature-switch 0,88%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/611
remove-duplicate-messages-alte 0,72%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4654
send-later-3 0,70%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/195275
gmail-conversation-view 0,62%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/54035
mail-merge 0,60% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/47144
Here, "Userbase" means the percentage of all TB users that have this
particular addon installed. That means e.g. 1 in 166 users have "mail
redirect" installed. There may be many more users who would like to
use this feature, but don't know that the extension exists, and more
that would find that feature useful, but don't know that something
like this exists. So, we cannot just take the raw numbers, but also
need to consider the usefulness for our users in general.
Please discuss each addon in its own thread. To help finding the
thread, please start the subject with "Integrating"
Ben
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net
Let me just be clear about this, because I'm not sure I was entirely
clear about it in my last message: I will not commit to maintaining
Thunderbird core code. In my experience, it is just too much of a pain
in the neck. So if you decide the right answer is to move my add-on's
functionality into Thunderbird core, then I'm OK with that, but don't
expect me to keep maintaining the code after you've done that, because I
won't.
jik
On 12/7/17 3:59 AM, Magnus Melin wrote:
I'd like to add that I don't think integrating the add-ons as add-ons
is necessarily a good idea. For popular features, I do support moving
those features to core, and certainly welcome add-on authors to keep
maintaining their feature there. For good code, moving it to core is
not likely to be significant work, at least compared to alternatives.
I think it's basically a requirement, because if the code lives
elsewhere, localization and other coordinated efforts can't be made to
work in a reasonable manner.
-Magnus
On 07-12-2017 00:20, Ben Bucksch wrote:
At today's TB Council meeting, we discussed the options how to deal
with breaking addons.
One suggestion by Wayne that many liked was to integrate popular and
useful extensions into TB core. They should contain functionality
that is closely related to Thunderbird core, be very useful, and be
very popular.
A good starting point are the list of the most popular 10 or so
extensions.
Another hint are extensions that large enterprise deployments
consider vital, e.g. IMAP folder sharing to allow for vacation
replacement.
Here's a filtered list of the most popular addons:
Name Userbase AMO URL
importexporttools 4,02%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/324492
lookout 2,11% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4433
enigmail 1,69% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/71
manually-sort-folders 1,42%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/15102
compactheader 1,36%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564
extra-folder-columns 1,27%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/9716
quicktext 0,97% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/640
gcontactsync 0,90%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/8451
signature-switch 0,88%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/611
remove-duplicate-messages-alte 0,72%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/4654
send-later-3 0,70%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/195275
gmail-conversation-view 0,62%
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/54035
mail-merge 0,60% https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/47144
Here, "Userbase" means the percentage of all TB users that have this
particular addon installed. That means e.g. 1 in 166 users have "mail
redirect" installed. There may be many more users who would like to
use this feature, but don't know that the extension exists, and more
that would find that feature useful, but don't know that something
like this exists. So, we cannot just take the raw numbers, but also
need to consider the usefulness for our users in general.
Please discuss each addon in its own thread. To help finding the
thread, please start the subject with "Integrating"
Ben
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net
Jonathan Kamens wrote on 07.12.17 15:13:
Let me just be clear about this, because I'm not sure I was entirely
clear about it in my last message: I will not commit to maintaining
Thunderbird core code. In my experience, it is just too much of a pain
in the neck. So if you decide the right answer is to move my add-on's
functionality into Thunderbird core, then I'm OK with that, but don't
expect me to keep maintaining the code after you've done that, because
I won't.
Hey jik,
I'm lacking a little context here. Which addon do you maintain?
Also, if you have suggestions how to improve the contribution to
Thunderbird, I'd be particularly happy to have you voice them, because I
think it should be improved. We have Ryan who just now joined
Thunderbird as community manager, and these kind of questions are
exactly why we hired him. If you can explain the problem and your
suggestions to him, he can take it from there.
Ben
Ben Bucksch wrote on 07.12.17 19:59:
Hey jik,
I'm lacking a little context here. Which addon do you maintain?
Also, if you have suggestions how to improve the contribution to
Thunderbird, I'd be particularly happy to have you voice them, because
I think it should be improved. We have Ryan who just now joined
Thunderbird as community manager, and these kind of questions are
exactly why we hired him. If you can explain the problem and your
suggestions to him, he can take it from there.
NEVERMIND
Sorry, the emails crossed. I just see that you answered both questions
in the other email.
Jonathan Kamens wrote on 07.12.17 15:11:
The code base is huge and convoluted, the mixture of different
technologies (C++, JavaScript, others) makes things cumbersome, much
of the code is crap and unpleasant to work with, the build process --
although it is getting better -- is cumbersome, it takes a long time
to build and takes up a huge amount of disk space, incremental builds
frequently fail due to other people's changes and force a rebuild from
scratch, writing test cases is unpleasant and complex, when I do take
the time to make and submit fixes to other people's code in the code
base my fixes are frequently ignored or I'm told they won't be
accepted unless I also submit unit tests (as an open-source author of
many software packages, I never demand that someone submitting fixes
to me also write test cases; if they go through significant time and
effort to identity the root cause of a bug and provide a fix, I owe it
to them to meet them halfway and do the tests if I think they're
necessary), it frequently takes many months to a fix to make it from
being committed to being released to the world, making changes to the
code base frequently requires negotiation, bargaining, and
collaboration with people who do not always have the time to respond
promptly and do not always contribute constructively, etc., etc.
Thanks, jik for the above list of problems you encountered. I concur
with a lot of what you said above.
let me suggest an alternative. Rather than trying to integrate these
add-ons into the Thunderbird code base, offer to assist the
maintainers of these add-ons by doing the minimal work necessary to
get each add-on "over the hump" and compatible with Thunderbird moving
forward, and then, having done that work, let the maintainer of the
add-on continue to maintain it as an add-on.
What concrete help would you appreciate most from the TB project?
Ben