Release schedule for TB 52.* and 60.*

[tanstaafl]

Wayne Mery (wsmwk) posted this to the tb-planning mailing list:

Folks have been awaiting information about new releases, specifically
Thunderbird 60.0, 52.8.0 and 52.9.0, and your patience is appreciated as
we work to improve the quality of these releases. Below is an
approximate outline and order of our plans for the next few months:

* release 52.8.0
* release 60.0b7, and 60.0b8 if needed, using Taskcluster build
infrastructure [1]
* release 52.8.1 for security updates that were not ready for 52.8.0
* release 60.0 for manual updates only [2] (June)
* release 60.1.0 and 52.9.0 (July)
* release 60.2.0 and end of life for 52 (September)

These items intentionally do not have dates associated with them. Months
are listed to help you plan, but we will release only when the code is
ready.

52.8.0 has been delayed from last week because of build issues (that is,
not code) which we expect to overcome in the next few days. 52.8.0 and
any point releases will include efail and other security fixes. The 52.x
release series will end with 52.9.x.

Thunderbird 60.0 has not been released yet (even though Firefox 60 ESR
has released) because there are important issues still to be resolved,
for example dictionary compatibility. You can download the beta from
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/ if you haven't yet
tested it. Use the links found on the new beta start page (alt+home) to
give feedback, which will be appreciated. (Note - Thunderbird 60 will
not initially have the Policy Engine that is a major feature of Firefox
60 ESR.)

Thank you for using Thunderbird. Check the ways you can be involved to
make Thunderbird better by visiting the new
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/ page.

[1] Taskcluster is a new continuous integration and deployment system
that Mozilla is already using for Firefox. Thunderbird nightly builds
are currently running on Taskcluster. But our current release builds are
running on Buildbot, which Firefox Release Engineering would like to
turn off as soon as possible. To avoid keeping Buildbot around for
another 42 weeks, we?d like to complete the Taskcluster migration now,
before we release 60.0.

[2] Manual updates of 60.0 will be the initial update mode, as we often
do for a new release, because of the breadth of fixes and improvements.
Manual-only updates (and updates via downloads) allows us to do a slow
rollout to users, to get more user feedback than is possible during the
beta period. Automatic updates will be enabled when we are satisfied
that we have sufficient numbers of users and a sufficient level of
quality - a process that typically takes some weeks.