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0.5 release - status update

Hi everyone,
sorry for being so quiet in the last 2-3 weeks. I know many of you are anxiously awaiting the upcoming 0.5 release. Some of you are probably even annoyed because of the utter lack of information regarding the upcoming release.

So what is the current status?

Basically, we're pretty much done. All the remaining blockers have been fixed and all but two locales (Macedonian and Slovenian) are ready for take-off. There are some small things to perform, before we can release Lightning and Sunbird 0.5, though:
  • We need to write the release notes
  • We need to rename the builds, so that they identify themselves as 0.5
  • We need to package the Lightning builds with all locales for the release candidate, so that localizers can test them before the actual release
  • We need to put those builds on the mozilla.org FTP server
All these tasks are not huge, but real life has put some obstacles into our path:
  • Matthew Willis (lilmatt) is very busy at his current day job at the moment. Since he is currently the only one, who knows all the magic to package the Lightning builds with all locales, we're a little bit stuck there.
  • Clint is busy at his new employer (Mozilla Corporation) and cannot devote as much time to Calendar-work as he used to.
  • Daniel, our new and shiny project lead, went to the Calendar Interop conference last week and could therefore not coordinate all the efforts needed for a release.
So, we haven't forgotten you guys out there. Believe me, when I say that we want to get this thing out to you, as soon as humanly possible. I hope you bear with us until 0.5 comes out.

Please also excuse me, when I do not announce a new and definitive release date here. The old open source mantra "Expect it when you see it" seems much safer to me, now that we have slipped by our original release schedule by more than a month.

I seriously hope that we have a release candidate ready at the end of the coming week or the beginning of the week after that. But that is all my crystal bowl allows me to see right now :-))

Posted by Simon Paquet on May 13, 2007 12:36 PM |

Comments

Please, Slovenian locale is translated, there is only noone to check it in! As you can see, I posted the patch yesterday already:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375872

Thanks, m.

Posted by: miles | May 13, 2007 1:19 PM

miles,
your patch had issues, as written down by me in comment 11 in the same bug.

Posted by: Simon Paquet | May 13, 2007 1:40 PM

After scouring the web for options to sync Sunbird with my Treo, I found a free service called ScheduleWorld (www.scheduleworld.com) that does the trick quite nicely. ScheduleWorld has a customized SyncML server with which you can sync both your network-enabled Palm device (using Synthesis' SyncML cilent: www.synthesis.ch) and Sunbird (using ScheduleWorld's Thunderbird/Sunbird plug-in). The plug-in doesn't support syncing of tasks yet, but they promise to add that feature very soon. It has a few bugs, but they're pretty good about patching them up once you report them.

Posted by: FrankMurphy | May 13, 2007 1:53 PM

Thanks for the update Simon, I'm sure a lot of peoples frustrations are due more to not knowing what is going on than not having a 0.5 release to play with, and you've alleviated that. And I'm sure everyone appreciates the efforts of the lead developers to fit lightning work in around their day to day lives. Thanks to all for their ongoing efforts!

Posted by: petenz | May 13, 2007 2:09 PM

Take your time folks. There's no need to hurry. It's better to have the 0.5 a couple of weeks later, but thoroughly tested.
Keep going, I love your extension.

Posted by: cruster | May 13, 2007 2:13 PM

Thanks for the update. You're right, we all eagerly anticipate 0.5, but we understand that everyone's busy at the moment. You've all done a great job at getting it ready for release so quickly, in my opinion, after 0.3.

I can't wait.

Posted by: Jon Pritchard | May 13, 2007 2:48 PM

simon,
I just uploaded the patched timezones.dtd. Hope this one works fine.
lp, m.

Posted by: miles | May 14, 2007 12:31 AM

I've been trying the nightly Lightning builds referenced in "The Rumbling Edge" and copy&paste does not work properly for me, using a webDAV (with HTTP auth) calendar. I don't have much time to work out what the underlying problem is, but has anyone else had problems copying (and specifically pasting multiple times) events? It used to work, once upon a time..

Posted by: bernie | May 14, 2007 9:13 AM

Thank you very much for the update. We're glad to see the RC1 release is almost there.

We understand that you are all volunteers with day jobs that pay the bills. What can we as a community do to help you?

Posted by: crimsondryad | May 14, 2007 11:01 AM

@crimsondryad
Join the Community Test Day tomorrow and help testing Sunbird/Lightning 0.5.

Posted by: ssitter | May 14, 2007 12:10 PM

Thanks for all the work you do on Sunbird/Lightning. But why is
Matthew Willis the only one who knows all the magic to package the Lightning builds with all locales? Seems a bit dangerous to me (getting hit by a bus etc.)

Posted by: John Veness | May 15, 2007 2:48 AM

John,
the reason is mainly, that Matt volunteered to do this, the first time this was needed. After that it fell to him all the time, because he had the most experience in this area.

I agree with you, that it would seriously hurt us, if he would be hit by a bus, but this is basically the case for every developer in a project as small as this one.

Posted by: Simon Paquet | May 15, 2007 4:16 AM