Thunderbird Making Progress With Adopting Rust Code

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Thunderbird Making Progress With Adopting Rust Code

Earlier this month at FOSDEM in Brussels was a presentation by developers Brendan Abolivier, Ikey Doherty, and Sean Burke on the Thunderbird mail client beginning to make use of the Rust programming language within its codebase...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Thunderbird-Rust-2024

[ehansin]

RustD, just saying

In case not clear, I'll add an /s for you.

On a more serious note, glad to see Thunderbird improving. I still have some gripes (relative text size settings vs. absolute numbers, and recently experienced Thunderbird pulling in long-deleted folders into the client as there - this of course makes me wonder why they are still lingering on the server!)

On a rust note, the more I use the Zed editor on macOS that was showcased in an article here, the more I am excited about the prospects of a Linux verion happening. Yes, they use rust. Also, their blog postings on there site show some serious intent on what they are looking to do with this editor, not to mention great transparency regarding the technical underpinnings. Okay, no more tangent, back to the regularly scheduled program...

[Sethox]

Rust is proving useful for replacing a lot of old, unmaintained code

Imagine if Wine project was rewritten to Rust.
Not blaming Wine developers, if a project have lived long enough there is bound to be forgotten code paths.

Still.. that would be an impressive feat and live up to the meme..

[rrveex]

Can Thunderbird speak caldav/carddav now? Last time I checked, one of those worked only with some obscure plugin.

It also wasn't able to display message summary on 2 lines, so that message list side by side with preview was unusable. As far as I remember, they said that change was too difficult.

Glad to hear they learned Rust meanwhile. This kind of proves Rust is an easy-to-master language?

[loligans]

Imagine if Wine project was rewritten to Rust.
Not blaming Wine developers, if a project have lived long enough there is bound to be forgotten code paths.

Still.. that would be an impressive feat and live up to the meme..

I also wonder if the Wine developers integrated the rust language with the existing code base if they would be able to make progress faster

[m4tx]

It is interesting to hear that the foundation that founded Rust 8 years ago is starting to use it in its second-biggest project now 😉

[fallingcats]

It is interesting to hear that the foundation that founded Rust 8 years ago is starting to use it in its second-biggest project now 😉

Thunderbird hasn't been with Mozilla in quite a while.

Edit: Seems that was wrong, it's still developed by some Mozilla subsidiary.

[DumbFsck]

Note: I don't use thunderbird.

Can Thunderbird speak caldav/carddav now? Last time I checked, one of those worked only with some obscure plugin.

Seems easy enough

It also wasn't able to display message summary on 2 lines, so that message list side by side with preview was unusable. As far as I remember, they said that change was too difficult.

Glad to hear they learned Rust meanwhile. This kind of proves Rust is an easy-to-master language?

I don't know what you mean with the two line message summary, as I said I don't use thunderbird. But I think it is possible. I think so because in this page they say stuff about choosing how many lines for message summary, it's in the last item, not numbered but after item 11.


These two things Ifound in a 10s search, just cause I wanted to be helpful. The actual reasoning for me to comment was another.



I can't follow how
"As far as I remember, they said that change was too difficult."
can lead to
"Glad to hear they learned Rust meanwhile. This kind of proves Rust is an easy-to-master language?"


What does one thing have anything to do with the other?

[billyswong]

Can Thunderbird speak caldav/carddav now? Last time I checked, one of those worked only with some obscure plugin.

It also wasn't able to display message summary on 2 lines, so that message list side by side with preview was unusable. As far as I remember, they said that change was too difficult.

Glad to hear they learned Rust meanwhile. This kind of proves Rust is an easy-to-master language?

They have added that "2 lines" stuff last year.

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/07/our-fastest-most-beautiful-release-ever-thunderbird-115-supernova-is-here/

115.png

[rrveex]

Note: I don't use thunderbird.

I can't follow how
"As far as I remember, they said that change was too difficult."
can lead to
"Glad to hear they learned Rust meanwhile. This kind of proves Rust is an easy-to-master language?"


What does one thing have anything to do with the other?

Sarcasm. They took years to implement trivial stuff like UI while complaining it is difficult. When you're unable to tie your shoelaces yet, Rust won't help, it will hinder you, because it's difficult itself.