Compatibility with Thunderbird 67 and newer versions

[jschwartzenberg]

It is not possible to install the XPI of v5.0.0-alpha3 on Thunderbird 67.0b3.

"This add-on could not be installed because it is not compatible with Thunderbird 67.0."

Does anybody happen to know what is necessary to get this to work? I would prefer using the latest release version, but I have a RHEL6 system on which the latest release version of Thunderbird crashes. This beta version works without issues however.

[advancingu]

Probably a lot of work is needed.
Related information:

• https://thunderbird-webextensions.readthedocs.io/en/latest/how-to/extensions68.html
• https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/67.0beta/releasenotes/
• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Add-ons_Guide_63#Changes_in_Thunderbird_67
• https://developer.thunderbird.net/add-ons/tb68

[swartzieee]

What are the chances that this add-on will be written to be compatible with Thunderbird v68? I believe it will to be out of beta soon.

[eric-hinkle]

Agreed! Would love to see this available on 68, i am no longer able to use this now that i have updated. bummer....

[elhennig]

I will not update TB until I know if I can use this addon afterwards. Is there anything that can be done to help sorting this request out?

[advancingu]

@elhennig As far as I can tell, there is a lot of work necessary. Most of the add-on code is of questionable quality and several years old. @Trim did a lot of structural clean-up work in the past but we didn't touch any of the Thunderbird specific add-on code.

I will try to take a closer look once Ubuntu has officially rolled out the update and I don't have to mess around with prerelease channels.

[TokenRing]

First thing I did was fresh install TB68 in a VM and see which extensions would actually work, and which ones wouldn't. This is the first "must have" extension I came across that is incompatible.

I'm in no rush - thanks for doing everything you do, advancingu. I'm fine with TB60 ESR at the moment. 68 can wait!

[jamesquilty]

@advancingu @Trim I want to help facilitate updates for TB 68 ESR compatibility, per my multiple comments in #163. As I asked there, would it be possible for me to be added as member of ExchangeCalendar so I can contribute?

Edited to add: there is relevant discussion about add-on compatibility happening right now on tb-planning, which is an opportunity to have the ExchangeCalendar extension, which is critically important for many users, receive similar recognition and support to other critically important calendaring extensions.

[advancingu]

@jamesquilty Thanks for your offer. Best way to start is simply by forking the repository and then submitting merge requests (PRs) from your repository back to this one here. This can be done independent of membership.

Regarding the mailing list, are you referring to this thread?

[jamesquilty]

@advancingu There have been several relevant threads in tb-planning August, since the request to relay an offer of help with updating extensions I cited in #163 comment 5. I'd specifically draw your attention to this thread, and specifically the discussion from this post.

In those threads, there's a link to https://developer.thunderbird.net/add-ons/updates/tb68 which is directly relevant to this issue:

Changes in Thunderbird 61-68

This document tries to cover all the changes that may by needed to make add-ons compatible with Thunderbird 68. If you find stuff that is no longer working but is not yet on this list, ask for help and advice in the mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird newsgroup or check our communication channels.

[holle]

Hi guys,

I just updated my rather complex extension to work with TB 68 and, yes, it took some time to figure out everything but as of now the "old style" XUL interface can be kept. You need to convert from install.rdf to manifest.json and then (probably) fix the preferences a bit. The major changes for me were to replace the by html:textarea elements and recreate some of the by since some weird layout bug caused them to render differently. Apart from that and some new eventHandlers I had to use instead of using onpageshow=".." attributes everything went fine. I would be glad to help if you need some advice or suggestions. Cheers, Holger

[attila123]

Workaround for Arch/Manjaro users so that they can stay at Thunderbird 60.x: I just added it (based on thunderbird-bin) due to this issue: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/thunderbird-60-bin