On 27/10/2015 03:32, Ehsan Akhgari wrote:
Over the years I have gained a *ton* of experience in code that
interfaces with both Firefox and Thunderbird/SeaMonkey. I can't really
think of a single instance where I made a change in that code and it
broke something in Thunderbird and the breakage was magically fixed
without my involvement.
What happens in practice is people file bugs and ping you and unless
we're talking about a very simple API change that is obvious to mirror
in c-c, nobody will do anything about the regression unless if the
Firefox developer looks at it. So it's a choice between actively
ignoring people (which is really being rude to them, which is not an
option I would personally take) or having to do some work (which often
involves reading and understanding the c-c code, debugging it, and so on.)
Now, as an employee of MoCo, I am told to spend 0 time on these issues.
Therefore, I try to be responsible, and nice, and spend my spare time
to fix them. (Saying this part with the best possible intentions) And
you've seen how I have been treated elsewhere in the thread, in the
sub-thread that I stopped participating in. This situation is really
not sustainable for a healthy community.
<slightly-off-topic> <!-- but somewhat interesting re. friction -->
I don't think the picture Ehsan is painting of the Thunderbird "people
filing bugs" is quite accurate.
I've been a contributor since March 2015, so my experience is limited.
However, all bugs I know of where Thunderbird people pestered Ehsan
(except the *one* Ehsan mentioned in his other e-mail about the document
encoder) had to do purely with the M-C editor or other parts of Gecko.
Since Thunderbird users use a "content-editable" element to write their
e-mail, they are more exposed to M-C editor bugs (like spell check marks
disappearing, fonts/styles getting lost, pre-formatted blocks getting
obliterated, copy/paste not working, etc., you can find the bug numbers
in the document linked below). All these bugs were Gecko bugs
reproducible in Firefox, no Thunderbird needed. What is costing Ehsan
his spare time is that the M-C editor as part of Gecko is sadly
neglected by Mozilla, it is not the pesky Thunderbird people. In fact,
quite the opposite is the case: Thanks to the pesky Thunderbird people,
M-C editor problems are getting reported and fixed, I myself have landed
six editor fixes, eight spell check related fixes and assisted with some
others issues. Telling Mozilla employees they should spend 0 time on
some areas of Gecko is in fact a bad decision which has led to a lot of
friction!
Just for completeness: The is another area where Thunderbird people are
pestering: Autocomplete. For about six months Thunderbird users had to
live with recipient addresses being erroneously flagged as unknown in
red colour. And the problem was in M-C. (Technical detail: an unsigned
int was decremented below 0 leading to "interesting" results.)
Quote:
> I can't really
> think of a single instance where I made a change in that code and it
> broke something in Thunderbird and the breakage was magically fixed
> without my involvement.
This is inaccurate. Apart from the one "special" decoder case, changes
mostly did not break Thunderbird, but Gecko. They were only noticed by
Thunderbird users. And of course the Gecko breakage didn't fix itself
magically.
One example hot of the press: Yesterday I was made aware of bug 1050566,
a drag and drop problem (and a regression of an earlier Gecko change).
Who complained: Of course a Thunderbird user, they dragged something
onto a mail "composition" window. Where is the problem: In Gecko, since
the problem can be reproduced in Firefox alone. Of course the problem
was noticed and reported by a Thunderbird user since there are not many
Firefox users who use
data:text/html, <html contenteditable>
as a URL and drag stuff onto the window.
</slightly-off-topic>
Coming back to the topic of the merge: The special case Ehsan mentioned
(encoder, bug 1125956) would have benefited from a merged repository.
(Note to Ehsan: Please take a look at bug 1214377. Your conditional
compilation from bug 1125956 has been made obsolete by your other
changes in the area.)
Jorg K.
(Mozilla contributor - http://www.jorgk.com/misc/Mozilla-work.pdf).
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