SM 2.21a1/2.20a2 nightly builds are NO LONGER busted

[Bergamot]

Any ETA on this? There's been no updates on the bug report since May 9

[rsx11m]

I don't have any news either. Maybe there's an update during Tuesday's meeting...

[rsx11m]

Neither of the release engineers were present during yesterday's meeting, and the minutes haven't been updated since, thus no definite news yet. Nothing to be expected this week, maybe some movement next week.

[colfer]

Are the latest trunk and aurora good? I'm think of switching up from beta, since beta is a few days older than aurora and trunk.

[therube]

I've been on Aurora of 0508 of 0508 of 0508 of 0508 of 0508 of 0508 of 0508 of 0508, heh.

[RDaneel]

I may have missed some thread somewhere... but just going on what I see here in "SeaMonkey Builds" - and the absence of builds on the FTP server - it looks like SM is dead?

I really hope not, because that would be seriously bleak.

Is there any reason for hope - like the project has been given/loaned some more build servers, and they are still just being [silently] built up and in the process of being brought into service?

I mean, sure, I can keep using 2.18 B4 (Windows 64-bit build in my case) for some time... but it has the occasional rough edge, plus I have seen a nasty bug where rebuilding the MSF files throws away all of the replied/forwarded etc metadata (which can be recompiled eventually, I believe) - these things deserve a chance to be fixed!

[rsx11m]

It is my understanding that a machine for the new buildmaster is available (that's the "thing" controlling the buildbots producing the actual builds) but is different from what was used before, thus needs some work to get everything up and running again beyond just putting the old configuration and programs on a new machine. In addition, Callek (the main release engineer) seems to have been unavailable, thus there hasn't been any recent progress in this regard.

[Pim]

"some work" indeed, if it takes more than a month. No releases, no betas, no nightlies, no tinderbox builds...

[RDaneel]

Yes, Pim, that is "some work"

rsx11m, thanks for delivering the details you had to offer... I don't feel quite as much in the dark, but then I don't have a new SM build since 2.18 B4, either.

[rsx11m]

Sorry to say, no news in the IRC logs.

[colfer]

Mozilla should chip in and pay for this and provide the engineering too, on security grounds alone. I don't like to complain about free software, but this is bad for the Mozilla name. I think Moz also needs a policy for what it would do if the same thing happened to Thunderbird.

[Philip Chee]

Mozilla should chip in and pay for this and provide the engineering too, on security grounds alone. I don't like to complain about free software, but this is bad for the Mozilla name. I think Moz also needs a policy for what it would do if the same thing happened to Thunderbird.

These days Thunderbird uses the same build infrastructure as Firefox so if TB builds fail so would Firefox.

SeaMonkey on the other hand lives on what Mozilla calls "Community" machines which are separate from MoCo proper. And community infrastructure isn't a priority with Mozilla IT.

Phil

[colfer]

The ftp tree now has some folders dated Jun 9, so there is hope! No new files in them, but I guess something happened.

[RDaneel]

Actually, this has been the case for quite a while now... the "nightly" folder under "/pub/seamonkey" gets a new timestamp every day, and as you say, a handful of its sub-folders also get that day's timestamp - but never any actual new contents.

I wonder what's up with this? I am assuming some mechanical procedure, but still... it is just teasing us.

I am becoming increasingly worried about "secondary" effects of this prolonged outage... will the actual code committers get discouraged and wander off, finding other projects to work on?

It would be terribly unfortunate for SeaMonkey to end like this... especially after surviving the MoFo (I think they were still just the foundation then) turning their back on SM, and then relegating it to "community" status when it became clear that a lot of people still thought it was (and is) a valuable - and viable - alternative to FF/TB.

[rsx11m]

I'd think that the contributors are committed too much to be thrown off the project just by hitting a little snag like this. It's disappointing that Mozilla apparently doesn't provide much of a backup in hardware for community projects, thus not being able to come up with an identical system to catch the load within a day or two as one would usually expect.