Thunderbird Bug Fix Lab
Overview
This lab is designed to give you first-hand experience working through a real bug, from confirming to fixing to submitting a patch. You will also get experience building and working with Thunderbird, which shares much of the same code with Firefox.
Introduction
A friend has told you about something they don't like in Mozilla Thunderbird. "I got an email today, and it made a hyperlink out of some text that shouldn't have been underlined."
Here is the text of the email:
Does Wednesday aft. work for you? I'll tentatively schedule for 3:30 on Wednesday. We'll come to S@Y...where should we meet?
which is being displayed as follows in Thunderbird:
Does Wednesday aft. work for you? I'll tentatively schedule 3:30 on Wednesday. We'll come to S@Y...where should we meet?
You rightly identify this as a bug to your friend, and offer to try and fix it.
Instructions
- File a dummy bug using Mozilla's test bugzilla. NOTE: use Unclassified and dump unwanted bugs here.
- Do a debug build of Thunderbird. NOTE: you can obtain a build from your professor if something goes wrong.
- Confirm the existence of this bug. TIP: try creating a message with the text above, saving it to Drafts, then open in Drafts to see how it gets rendered.
- Fix the bug. If you need a hint to figure out where to begin working, look here.
- Create a patch
- Attach your patch to the dummy bug you filed in step 1
- Get your patch reviewed by a classmate or your professor
- Put your patch and review comments on your personal wiki page
- Blog about the experience and include a link to wiki page
List of Valid/Invalid Email Address
Valid Addresses
- a@a.com
- a.a@a.a
- a.a@a.a.com
Invalid Addresses
- a@.
- a@..
- a@..f
- a@....f
- @.
- @.com
- @a.com
- @a
- @a.
- @a..
- @a...com
- a@a.a..a
Resources
- Creating a patch for Mozilla
- Build your own tree, or use this lab-friendly CVS Thunderbird tree:
- Win32 http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/tb-cvs.tgz 394M (NOTE: this must be extracted to C:\temp such that client.mk ends-up in C:\temp\tb\mozilla\client.mk)
- Regular expression tester: http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/~chris.tyler/regexp/
