Thunderbird:Testdays
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Welcome to the Thunderbird Test Day wiki!
With help from the Thunderbird / Mozilla Messaging team, join us to test Thunderbird. We also invite you to inform yourself via Thunderbird wiki pages about the state of Thunderbird, version 3, and how you might help improve this great messaging platform. We also run bugdays, in which you can participate and help plan via Planning for bugdays.
Who
You, and others interested in the future of Thunderbird.
No coding, (almost*) no experience required. Anyone can participate and be a valuable contributor. There are people available to assist you. You must however run code which is development status. * It will help if you have used Thunderbird for 2-3 months.
Why
Test days are about assessing how good a specific version of Thunderbird is for a population of users larger than the core of people involved in coding the fixes and improvements. A larger population is essential because a diverse set of testers on a diverse set of computers is required to ferret out problems which are themselves ... diverse. Testing the code also helps find its functional weaknesses, and confirms its strengths.
Currently there are lots (LOTS!) of bugs - some of which we evaluate during Bug Days. We invite you to join us on bug days which occur every Thursday. Bug days are designed to help newcomers in the process of cleaning up the database and drive down the line in this chart.
Schedule
Multiple staffed sessions allow you to participate during the evening or during daytime at any location in the world. You may attend any or all sessions as they wish. If you can't attend a scheduled session please drop in between sessions - someone might be hanging out who can help you. If you can't participate in today's bugday, we invite you to participate in a future Test Day. Or, work on any bug any day or time - see Where about getting help.
Click in a UTC link below to get the session start time for your point on the globe.
| Sessions | |||
| Timezone | Session 1 13h-15h UTC |
Session 2 19h-21h UTC |
Session 3 02h-05h UTC |
| Los Angeles, USA (PDT=UTC-8+1) | Thu 06h-08h | Thu 12h-14h | Thu 19h-22h |
| New York, USA (EDT=UTC-5+1) | Thu 09h-11h | Thu 15h-17h | Thu 22h-01h |
| São Paulo, Brazil (UTC-4+1) | Thu 10h-12h | Thu 16h-18h | Thu 23h-02h |
| UK (BST) | Thu 14h-16h | Thu 20h-22h | Fri 03h-06h |
| Berlin, Germany (CEST=UTC+1+1) | Thu 15h-17h | Thu 21h-23h | Fri 04h-07h |
| Moscow, Russia (UTC+3+1) | Thu 17h-19h | Thu 23h-01h | Fri 06h-09h |
| Beijing, China (UTC+8) | Thu 21h-23h | Fri 03h-04h | Fri 10h-13h |
Where
You can get help on bug day in IRC channel #testday. Prior to the scheduled date you can get help on preparing by asking in #maildev.)
- Get an IRC client:
- Connect to irc.mozilla.org
- Join the channel #testday
How
DRAFT - Please revisit this page on Thursday May 5. More details such as release notes, what to test, and where to get builds will be available at that time.
If at any point you have a question, encounter a problem, or are not familiar with our bug tracking system (bugzilla) post a note in the IRC channel.
If you are new to bugzilla you won't be able to change most bug fields, but you can add a comment to a bug detailing what should be changed and why. You can also make your comments known in the #testday channel and someone will assist you. (optional) See Bug triage about how to get upgraded privileges to change bug fields.
For Test Day of Thunderbird Alpha 1:
- Get a Bugzilla account - easily created at bugzilla account.
- Get a build - Location TBD
- Protect - Backup your data and consider using a test profile. You might also want to have a backup of your mail.
- Test - Suggestions
- Run Thunderbird Trunk litmus tests. Ask for help in #testday if you're not familiar with Litmus. If a testcase is unclear, mark it as such. See also the Litmus tutorial.
- Exercise your favorite (or least favorite) Thunderbird functions and provide feedback. Example to test: account setup, large scale POP and imap downloads, filters, junk mail processing
- Try new capabilities of Thunderbird 3
- Test Thunderbird on multiple operating systems, if you have multiple OS
- Test various presumed crashers, hangs, and other problems, and update the respective bugs
- Update or file bugs for problems that you encounter:
- File bugs
- For UNCONFIRMED bugs, you should attempt to replicate the problem specified in the bug report, and mark as "confirmed" if you are able to replicate and the steps to reproduce are well documented and easily followed and the problem exists in trunk build. If you are not running trunk but can replicate with current release, please comment but do not confirm. If you are running trunk and cannot replicate, you might close it dupe, WFM, INVALID, or perhaps the issue is not easily reproduced.
Other helpful steps include:
- Clarify bug reports without distorting or changing the original problem.
- Change the summary to be more accurate to the problem being reported, and if appropriate remove words so summary is less chatty
- Close bug reports as WORKSFORME, INVALID, or INCOMPLETE when it's appropriate to do so (see status descriptions to find out what is appropriate)].
- Ask bug reporter in a bug comment to provide missing information that will help to replicate and ultimately fix the bugs they report.
- Remember to cite what version(s) of Thunderbird you are using.
- Give feedback about your experience during Test Day.(see feedback heading below)
Please check these for more helpful information:
- Thunderbird Bug triage - expert tips, extensions, reference documents
- Bug Writing Guidelines describes writing of effective bug reports that lead to bug fixes.
Versions to test: If you can, please test with Nightly Trunk Builds. If you are not permitted to use trunk, then use the latest update of Thunderbird version 2 - currently 2.0.0.12. You can install a trunk build or any release of Thunderbird, and not disturb your production setup by a) using custom install to specify a directory of your choosing, and b) using profile manager to create a test profile.
Give us feedback
Please post a note in #testday or #maildev about your experience: problems, questions, ideas to improve documentation, where you learned about testday, and overall thoughts about Thunderbird. We really appreciate your help today and your feedback is very valuable.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for your help. Your efforts help us to improve Thunderbird. We could never do this without you and the entire volunteer community.