SeaMonkey Project Blog

Dear All,

On behalf of the SeaMonkey project, I’d like to wish everyone a very Happy, safe, prosperous and healthy New Year!

First and foremost, 2.53.1b1 will soon be released; pending final checks.  Once that’s done; it’s good as going gold.   That said, I did miss a few items (updating the checks… *sigh*); but it’s not going to be a biggy.  (The crashreporter files for all platforms except Win* were missing.)

Next, I just want to take this opportunity to mention that the delay in the release was not frg’s or Ian’s or anyone else’s fault but mine.  I take the full blame for the delay in the release as I was trying to streamline the release scripts, which took the brunt of the time.  So please, I appreciate that if anyone has any complaints, please direct your ire and frustration at me, not them.   They’ve done a HUGE amount of work doing the builds, something which was supposed to be my doing.  So they deserve all the kudos and gratitudes for getting things done.

I’m hoping that before the next release, I’ll at least get some semblance of the builds and updates working so that they don’t need to bother with the builds and concentrate on getting the fixes in.

So I need to apologize to everyone for the delay.  While fixing the infrastructure has been a very long and arduous project that *still* hasn’t come to any fruition yet.  I’m not making any excuses for my tardiness (despite being in a job and a family to feed…), I take this responsibility seriously.

In any event, thank you everyone for your patience with the project and with me.

:ewong

Actually,  not really.   We’ve kinda moved away, though we still have a presence and there’s nothing to sell…

If it wasn’t official then, it’s official now.  Mozilla has decided to switch off irc.mozilla.org in March 2020.  In its place, they’re going to use Riot/Matrix.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank all those hardworking sysops/ircops at irc.mozilla.org for the plethora of years of protecting the irc servers from undesirables [I do have a much better set of language, but this is a public, family friendly blog…soooo… use your imagination. 😛 ].

That said, just want to make sure everyone that still supports SeaMonkey to mosey on to Freenode’s #seamonkey channel.

Thanks irc.mozilla.org!  As they say,  irc.mozilla.org is dead… or dying..  Long Live irc.mozilla.org!   [kinda reminiscent of SCL3 is dead! Long live SCL3!]

:ewong

PS: And yes..  we’re still around.

Hi,

SeaMonkey is currently as far behind the release schedule (rapid release or otherwise).  Mozilla isn’t making it easier for us to release things; but, hopefully we’ll be under our own release schedule (if we’re not already) for Mozilla to have any affect on us.

That said, I can’t help but feel that I’ve dropped the proverbial ball  on this release.    I’d like to personally offer my own apologies for the delay.  It’s entirely and wholy my fault and not the fault of the other devs.   I have a lot of ideas to get things working again; but, I’m hoping I’ll get the chance to do what I’ve set out to do for SeaMonkey.

Yours truly,

:ewong

Hi Everyone.

2.49.5 was just ‘released’ (aka pushed to the releases/2.49.5) portion of archive.mozilla.org.

It has been an intensely frustrating experience, and dare I say worse than 2.46’s release.  I can’t imagine how much everyone is wanting to kick me off the team…

I’m still working on making the release process ‘smoother’, but it’s a very steep uphill battle (dare I even quote Richie from “Bottoms”..  “Steep?  It’s F’ing vertical!”)

That said…  I’ve got some time to fix this whole smegging smegfest..

Yours honestly,

:ewong

Hi everyone!

Build 3 has been pushed to the regular candidates path.  I’ve coined a ‘new’ term “candidatized”, meaning it’s been sent to the candidates path on archive.mo.

That said, there’s a chance it’ll be dubbed 2.49.5 instead of rc3.

Also, that said, there’s a few changes from the previous automation-based releases/candidates; that being, a lot of the files that are supposed to be there, aren’t and files that shouldn’t be there, are.  The automation is still not working.  The automation that’s in place is manual…  😛

Yes, we’re missing a README file.   No fear…  that’s coming next.  So if you refresh that main build3/ page, it should appear within 24 hrs provided it’s there.  [motif being “it’s there when it’s there.”]

Again, I cannot stress this out.  Both IanN and frg were the mainstays of this release.  So all round applause to them!

:ewong

Hi,

After a long delay, I’ve uploaded the build2 of 2.49.5.

Checksums are there.

Next to be done will be build #3.

:ewong

Hi All,

There seems to be a mistake.  I have generated… well, not *I* per se, but the automation (*lol…  yeah.. *right*) or semi-automation seemed to have sent some of the tarballs/binaries elsewhere (or ignored them…).  This will be fixed.

Seriously..  when will my incompetence end?

My apologies.

:ewong

Dear All,

The checksums have been updated.

Sorry for the fubariness.   I had tested the script on one file and it worked, so I ran it for the rest of the binaries.  The flaw in that idea is that just because the ‘first’ binary’s checksum was right, it didn’t mean the others are.

The script’s been fixed.

:ewong

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a hell of a long time since an update.  So… here’s the long awaited update.

1. I’ve been swamped at work and stumbling over everything related to SeaMonkey.  My apologies.
2. Thankfully, both Ian and Frg have taken upon themselves to get the builds going.  2.49.5 will be released in their honor.

That said, and it bears repeating, IanN and frg have both been hard at work generating the 2.49.5 build1 builds manually and I owe them a debt of gratitude for working on the builds.  While I don’t expect them to need to manually do any other versions other than 2.49.5, I can’t guarantee anything.

Now on to 2.49.5 release comments.

1. The whole build/release process is sooooo different from what everyone’s used to, I’m not sure how to proceed.
2. That said, build1 is being uploaded to the candidates/ section on https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/candidates/2.49.5-candidates…   In the past, any build<n> (where n > 1) usually means n-1 builds were failures.   It’s no longer the case as build<n> should be more or less treated as ‘release candidates’ (aka.  rc<#> in the olden days).
3. Due to how things are done, the release files are uploaded ‘manually’ (as in not part of automation), so there’ll probably be some missing items. (Case in point, README…  those will be generated in the release/).

As for the infrastructure, it is at the bare minimum ‘of ok’ness.   That isn’t the problem or issue.  It’s the automation that’s still being worked on.   I know. My complete bad.  But it is being worked on with due haste.

Now that the current project’s update information has been updated, I’m returning to your scheduled program of preparing the tar and feathers….. um… oh wait.look…   I can explain…

:ewong

Hi Everyone,

tl;dr; I’ve messed up majorly and need to revamp the infrastructure; meaning further delaying any hopes of releasing ANYTHING. Blame lies solely on me as I had contracted the serious case of “Thomas the Steam Engine”-itis.

That said, things probably aren’t that bad; I’m just so deep into this hole that I’ve dug the project into, I certainly can’t see the light of day.

Call me, Mole…  Mr. Mole.

— Long Missive —

I have taken up the mantle of the person who will bring bad news. (Could be good news, depending on your point of view, I guess).

But first, a confession.

I screwed up. I admit it. In the past, our old infrastructure’s CI was manageable; just had to fix up some code. But now, things have become untenable as the current build process is completely incompatible with the current CI code and changing the whole backend codebase is requires understanding the current build process (which has changed dramatically since Mozilla moved to using TaskCluster).
(NB: No.. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming Mozilla. Just saying that *I* can’t keep up with their changes, which probably speaks volumes of my competencies and delusional thought process.) So what is needed is revamping the whole CI code to make it work.

That said, since time is of the essence, I’ve consulted with the rest of the guys and we’re moving to Jenkins, since revamping the old CI code would require some hacking at an already Frankenstein-like code, so the technical debt needs to be paid.

Is it the end of the world? No. I’m just particularly unhappy that we’re in this situation; but hindsight is always 20/20. So yes, this means any future releases will depend on getting the whole build process encoded into whatever way Jenkins requires.

Also note that SeaMonkey needs to completely stop relying on Mozilla’s infrastructure (*every single thing*, including this blog, bugzilla… you name it.. we need to be off it) by end of the year.

Anyway, I sincerely apologize for the mess; both to every single one of SeaMonkey’s users (both past and present) and to my fellow devs (again, both past and present).   As part of my defense, last year, I thought (with the delusions of competencies) moving to Azure wouldn’t be that problematic and while I did get a ‘running’ (though not really building) infra, everything went crazy near the end of last year as I had realized the required builds and branches needed new tool chains; and building these toolchains required a lot of time and energy.  At the end… a failed attempt at keeping up to date with the whole build process.

So… the project is at a standstill.

In any event, I would like to thank everyone for their support in the past and continual support and infinite patience as this project continues to climb this steep (or as Richie from “Bottom” would say, “f’ing” vertical) hill/mountain.

*sigh*

:ewong

NB: In other words… Live and Learn.