Thunderbird testing

Discussion about official Mozilla Thunderbird builds
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LoudNoise
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Thunderbird testing

Post by LoudNoise »

I have started to put my toe into Tb testing recently and still find it incredibly stable. The problem is that I don't know how to beat up on it. For example, how do I turn on maildir and OAUTH authorization in GMail IMAP accounts?
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by ffextensionguru »

LoudNoise wrote:I have started to put my toe into Tb testing recently and still find it incredibly stable. The problem is that I don't know how to beat up on it. For example, how do I turn on maildir and OAUTH authorization in GMail IMAP accounts?


This is bad that I am having to dig down into comments on an article announcing the new features in Thunderbird to find out how to use said features. I haven't tried this as I've had my Gmail accounts so long seems they were grandfathered and I didn't have to enable the 'less secure authentication'.

https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/20 ... -released/

In an existing GMail account, you can switch the “Authentication Method” from “Normal Password” to “Oauth2″ (in both the IMAP and SMTP setup separately). Connection security should be SSL/TLS. If by “application-specific passwords method” you mean Google’s enabling of traditional IMAP passwords using their “less secure authentication” option, yes you can do away with that on an account using OAuth2 authentication.


As for maildir (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Ma ... box_format),I don't really understand the purpose and I am little lerry when the article stated talking about about 'possible side-effects':

Though, we aren't sure of the side-effects of using maildir as the default store on a profile that was created on Berkeley mailbox(mbox) format; so we suggest you to create a fresh profile to work with maildir so as to avoid any dataloss that might occur.
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by wsmwk »

LoudNoise wrote:I have started to put my toe into Tb testing recently and still find it incredibly stable. The problem is that I don't know how to beat up on it. For example, how do I turn on maildir and OAUTH authorization in GMail IMAP accounts?

Oauth is straghtforward.

maildir does deserve additional notes, which haven't been completed as we prioritize stablizing version 38 and getting betas back on track. There's been a high learning curve for the few people who are doing this work.

The short story on maildir is you should expect your accounts to behave in every way as they do today, but without the cost of having to do compact and without the problems that come with that. AFAIK all the known bugs have maildir in the title, so it's an easy matter to find them in bugzilla. Testing maildir IMO is much less risky when using imap accounts, rather than pop. And in theory, with imap, I think the only time your imap data is at risk is when you copy or move messages into or out of an imap folder. But, as I said, more info to come.
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by LoudNoise »

Is it possible to do maildir testing on an account basis? I have two POP accounts and one Imap.
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by wsmwk »

Indeed it is a per account setting
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by LoudNoise »

Thanks. I just downloaded 42.0a1 and will install it this weekend. Be prepared for more questions :)
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by ffextensionguru »

Got to see what OAuth2 was all about today when I setup a new Gmail account and added it into Thunderbird. Interestingly, after I entered the display name, email address, password and then choose IMAP I was presented with a Google pop-up window to enter my account credentials and authorize Thunderbird for that email account. Once that was done the account was setup in Thunderbird. A much smoother process than when I went to setup my father's new Gmail account in Thunderbird a few months back and ran into problems (didn't understand the 'less secure authentication' option within Gmail interface).
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by wsmwk »

LoudNoise wrote:Thanks. I just downloaded 42.0a1 and will install it this weekend. Be prepared for more questions :)

That's great. However, I'm only passively using it on one of my small accounts. So I'm unlikely to answer functional questions. The place to ask questions where developers will be paying attention is mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird. Or of course file bugs when bugs are found.

N.B. when additional testing gets announced, it will be on th-planning and https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/thunderbird-testers
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by ffextensionguru »

I discovered OAuth2 also applies when adding a Google Calendar (via Provider for Google Calendar) into Lightning/Thunderbird.

For those who want to see what the account setup process looks like in Thunderbird for a Gmail account with OAuth2, I did a post with several screenshots on my blog.
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by LoudNoise »

"and then bounce everything from the old" is an excellent idea. The only gmail account that I am willing to have data lost to testing is also the email account I use for getting credentials for sites I am not yet willing to trust. This does not have a lot of activity. A simple filter both at home and work will solve this problem.
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Re: Thunderbird testing

Post by wsmwk »

LoudNoise wrote:I have started to put my toe into Tb testing recently and still find it incredibly stable. The problem is that I don't know how to beat up on it. For example, how do I turn on maildir and OAUTH authorization in GMail IMAP accounts?
LoudNoise,

I hope your toes are still good! :)

Note there are several avenues for testing. Here are a few, but there are more:
* feature testing - for when a specific new feature lands in development (such as what you listed above)
* release acceptability testing, to test builds and releases just before we ship them to users
* long term running of beta from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/
* bleeding edge daily https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunder ... m-central/
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