Weekly Meetings: November 7, 14 and 21, 2011

Posted on by

We’ve been a bit bad about posting summaries of our weekly meetings the past few weeks, but that doesn’t mean nothings been going on! In fact, we’ve had a lot of major changes coming down the pipeline: here’s a summary of what’s new with Instantbird.

Weekly meetings are held every Monday at 4pm UTC (that’s 6pm for people in France, and 9am for people in San Francisco) in #instantbird on irc.mozilla.org.

What’s Been Done?

  • Dependency on libpurple has been eliminate: this included a big rewrite of the core service and how accounts and statuses were handled.
  • Florian attended MozCamp and gave a talk on Instantbird.
  • Participants in chat rooms are now only colored once they’ve participated.
  • Mozilla has been updated from 7.0.1 to 9.0 beta 2.
  • Many small back logged patches have been checked-in.

What’s Been Happening?

There’s been lots of big changes landing, and more to come! Although many of them are back end changes, they’ll pave the way for more visible features in the future.  We’ll try to do a better job of keeping our blog up to date with what’s going on.

As always, full chat logs and the EtherPad is available for each meeting; November 7 (chat logs, etherpad), November 14 (etherpad), and November 21 (chat logs, etherpad). Note that no real discussion occurred on November 14th, just a summary of the week’s progress.

9 thoughts on “Weekly Meetings: November 7, 14 and 21, 2011”

  1. I’m curious why libpurple was removed?

    • Hi Caspy7,
      don’t worry, libpurple was not removed. We’ll keep using it and you’ll have all the protocols available that you used to have.

      The change was made so that some parts of the Instantbird code (we have Javascript-based protocol plugins that aren’t part of libpurple) can be re-used in another application that can’t ship libpurple because of incompatible licensing.

      Best regards,
      Benedikt P.
      • Ah. Thanks for setting me straight (both of you).
        I’m used to removing the dependencies on something as being the direct precursor to removing it.

    • Yes, as Mic stated libpurple was not removed, the DEPENDENCY on using libpurple was removed. This means that Instantbird can now (optionally) be built without libpurple. We have no plans to build it without libpurple in our distribution currently.

  2. Could you please let me know if there is a expected date for integrating SIPE protocol?

    • I’ve been working on getting SIPE for a while now. I have it compiling with the current nightlies, but I’m unable to make accounts right now. I need to track this down, then test it connecting to a network. Hopefully for Instantbird 1.2 this will be done! :) You should be able to follow any progress at https://bugzilla.instantbird.org/show_bug.cgi?id=976

  3. Did the development of this client suddenly die or why did the news stop?

    • No, development is still chugging along! We’re hoping to release Instantbird 1.2 soon. Unfortunately we got a bit busy (especially around the holidays) and our blog posts seem to have gotten dropped on the floor. :( Sorry about that! I’ll see if I (or someone else) can whip up something soon to keep everyone informed about what’s gone on in the last couple of months!

      Thanks for your concern!

      • Thanks for the reply, wasn’t exactly expecting to be responded to so quickly so I didn’t check back here sooner. Glad things are still going on. :)