View source for Features/Thunderbird/Improved Build System

{{FeatureStatus
|Feature name=Improved Build System
|Feature stage=On hold
|Feature health=OK
|Feature status note=[up for grabs][This is not a feature as such, but a set of improvements to the build system for Thunderbird]
}}
{{FeatureTeam
|Feature feature manager=Mark Banner
}}
{{FeaturePageBody
|Feature overview=Thunderbird has a complex build system. In comm-central there is a near-duplicate clone of the mozilla-central build system, that supports building of Thunderbird. Not only that, but both build systems are required to build Thunderbird.

Due to the build system not being an exact copy, there are high porting and maintenance overheads to keep up to date with mozilla-central. These need to be reduced.

As well as the build system, there are improvements to the packaging system to be made to help ensure Thunderbird is shipping with the correct files.
|Feature users and use cases=Developers and building of Thunderbird.
|Feature implementation plan=For the build-config part, there's several possible stages:

1) In comm-central, prototype the extraction of Thunderbird and Mailnews specific arguments into a sub-configure file that is called from the configure file, but is as minimal as possible and does not duplicate the build system into the sub-configure ({{bug|648980}})

2) Reduce the differences between the main comm-central and mozilla-central configures.

3) Investigate keeping comm-central in sync with mozilla-central using scripts or modified files.

4) Assuming that's not viable, investigate fully switching comm-central to be a sub-directory under mozilla-central ({{bug|648979}})

Also, for packaging system, there's a couple of bugs worth trying to fix:

- {{Bug|713133}} This will make package failures fatal, so if we're trying to package things that no longer exist, we'll get warned about it.

- {{Bug|526333}} Defines a core package-manifest for all apps to use and share, which helps with reducing breakages when core items are added.
}}
{{FeatureInfo
|Feature priority=Unprioritized
|Feature roadmap=Thunderbird
|Feature list=Thunderbird
|Feature engineering team=Thunderbird
}}
{{FeatureTeamStatus
|Feature security status=Not Needed
|Feature privacy status=Not Needed
|Feature localization status=Not Needed
|Feature accessibility status=Not Needed
|Feature ux status=Not Needed
|Feature product marketing status=Not Needed
|Feature operations status=Not Needed
}}