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Thunderbird: The Build and Release Process Explained

Our Community Office Hours session for May 2024 has concluded, and it was quite informative (especially for non-developers like me)! Wayne and Daniel shed light on Thunderbird’s build and release process, ran through a detailed presentation, answered questions, and treated us to live demos showing how a new Thunderbird build gets pushed and promoted to release.

Below you’ll find a lightly edited recording of the session, and the presentation slides in PDF format.

We’ll be announcing the topic of our June Office Hours session soon, so keep an eye on the Thunderbird blog.

Links and Further Reading

• Download Channels: ESR, Beta, Daily, default release
• Thunderbird’s release and events calendar (closely follows the Firefox release schedule)
• Thunderbird Release Notes
• Thunderbird CI Docs
• Treeherder
• Thunderbird statistics
• Thunderbird crash statistics

ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Have you ever wondered what the release process of Thunderbird is like? Wanted to know if a particular bug would be fixed in the next release? Or how long release support lasts? Or just how many point releases are there?

In the May Office Hours, we’ll demystify the current Thunderbird release process as we get closer to the next Extended Security Release on July 10, 2024. 

May Office Hours: The Thunderbird Release Process

One of our guests you may know already: Wayne Mery, our release and community manager. Daniel Darnell, a key release engineer, will also join us. They’ll answer questions about what roles they play, how we stage releases, and when they know if releases are ready. Additionally, they’ll tell us about the future of Thunderbird releases, including working with add-on developers and exploring a monthly release cadence.

Join us as our guests answer these questions and more in the next edition of our Community Office Hours! You can also submit your own questions about this topic beforehand and we’ll be sure to answer them: officehours@thunderbird.net

Catch Up On Last Month’s Thunderbird Community Office Hours

While you’re thinking of questions to ask, watch last month’s office hours where we chatted with three key developers bringing Rust and native Microsoft Exchange support into Thunderbird. You can find the video on our TILvids page.

Join The Video Chat

We’ll be back in our Big Blue Button room, provided by KDE and the Linux Application Summit. We’re grateful for their support and to have an open source web conferencing solution for our community office hours.

Date and Time: Friday, May 31 at 17:30 UTC

Direct URL to Join: https://meet.thunderbird.net/b/hea-uex-usn-rb1

Access Code: 964573