Thunderbird/Students/StatusUpdates/2010-01-29
This week’s Random Notes
Status Updates
Zach Church
Tim Miller
So I woke up on Saturday and headed in to school, set on having a productive, useful day and make some progress on my bug.
However, I could not get Thunderbird to compile. The error was related to a data type defined in the Windows 7 SDK, and was in a file i had not modified. So I began my quest to resolve it.
One of the first things I did was to check the SDK version windows was set to use. It was set to v6.0A. I have no idea why it was set to that, but it was wrong so I fixed it. Still didn't compile though.
Fast forward six hours. Still not compiling and I'm pulling what's left of my hair out in frustration. I was talking to sid0 on irc though and he mentioned a useful bit of information. The console checked the SDK version on startup, so it had to be restarted if the version was changed. Which I did six hours ago. Sure enough, restarted the console and it worked.
So pretty much my whole Saturday was wasted on a something that took a total of 30 seconds to fix. But at least it is compiling now. Now I can write some tests and submit a patch so I can get back to working on my original bug.
Marcel Guzman
For some reason, three classes of mine decided to make an essay due during this week (yes, seriously :(), so I didn't have time to hop on IRC and talk to the people I needed to talk to about testing the activity manager changes I've made. I did manage to steal a few minutes or an hour here and there however, and I spent that working on getting folder compacting to log in the activity manager.
So far, I've figured out how to add a new "Activity Module" and I've tried hooking that up to the compacting events that get fired. This currently doesn't work so I'm working on my gdb skills to try and figure out what's wrong.
Kefu Zhao
Lindauson Hazell
This Week 01/24/10 - 01/30/10:
I'm a bit puzzled... I've gone though the mailWindowOverlay.xul and added in the missing command elements associated with the incorrectly enabled menu-items.
Sadly the changes in the script don't seem to have any effect on the incorrectly enabled menu-items.
There is a comment in the code that mentions a utilityOverlay.xul. I'm gathering that it is being used as a temporary bug fix. I think the utilityOverlay.xul file is overriding the mailWindowOverlay.xul.
Next week 01/31/10 - 02/06/10:
Continue woking on [Bug 495815]. Specifically looking into the utilityOverlay.xul file.
Evan Stratford
Wei Xian Woo
Still working on bug 408338. I think I made pretty good progress this week.
For my first patch, I intended only to support periodically saving session state so that we can restore a user's session in the event TB crashed and deferred the other requested features to subsequent patches. However, I ended up finishing off supporting saving of session state for multiple 3-pane windows as well. Details:
- For context, the 3-pane window is the "what you think of when you think of Thunderbird" window.
- Prior to this, we only supported persisting the state of the last 3-pane window that was still active at the time Thunderbird shuts down CLEANLY. If TB crashed, we feel bad and start up cleanly next time for the user.
- Firefox restores state for all windows only if Firefox crashed. On a clean shut down, state is persisted only for the last window.
- In an effort to keep the same behaviour across Mozilla apps, I implemented TB's new Session Restore Manager to imitate the session saving/restoring behaviour in Firefox.
So, what's next?
- Tests for patch 1!!!
- Richer state!
- Support other window types!
What happened to that Python script I said I was going to post on my blog?
- I stopped blogging when I came to Waterloo, so I don't actually own a blog anymore. For the past week, I have been working on a WordPress theme for my new blog. I expect the script to be posted by the end of next week. Sorry for the delays!
Who’s writing the blog post this week?
Tim Miller