We recommend using our code search engine, Searchfox, to inspect the source code and find snippets and references to help you out while investigating a bug. The code base is pretty big and if you never worked with XBL or Custom Elements it can be overwhelming at first. Making sense of the Thunderbird source code, and knowing where to look, will take some time. However, we assume you came here to fix your "pet hate" bug, so you already likely have a bug to work with. You can see a list of "easy" bugs for beginners via this query. Use the Advanced Search section to find bugs you want to take care of, and be sure that the bug doesn't currently have any user listed as Assignee and the Status is set to NEW. If you're currently using an IRC username in the #maildev channel, we recommend saving your profile name with the current format Firstname Lastname (:username) in order to be easily searchable and allow the Thunderbird team to offer better support. Create a Bugzilla accountĬreating an account is necessary in order to submit patches, leave comments, and interact with any other aspect of Bugzilla.
For instance you can see how they are listed by looking at recent bugs for Thunderbird. Fixing a Bug and Submitting PatchesĪll the issues, bugs, work in progress patches, or updates related to Thunderbird, are listed on Bugzilla and are properly organized per Product, Component, and Status. If you want to become a contributor to Thunderbird, you will need an account on Bugzilla. Thunderbird uses bugzilla for reporting and tracking bugs as well as enhancement requests. Report a Bug and Request Features Bugzilla
If you want to ask questions about how to hack on Thunderbird, the IRC channel you want to join is #maildev on. It is a place where you can raise questions and ideas for core Thunderbird development.
Below are some quick references from that page that you can use if you are looking to contribute to Thunderbird core right away. We have a complete listing of the ways in which you can get involved with Thunderbird on our website. You can create a file with this line by doing this in the root source directory:Ĭontributing Getting Plugged into the Community mozconfig) to the root directory of the mozilla-central checkout that contains the option comm/mail enabled. To build Thunderbird, you need to create a file named mozconfig (can also be. If you have not already done so, please complete the instructions for your operating system and then continue following this guide:
This README assumes that you already have the prerequisite software required to build Thunderbird. The comm-central repository is added as a subdirectory "comm/" under mozilla-central. The mozilla-central repostitory contains the Firefox codebase and all of the platform code. Check out our Getting Started documentation for instructions on how and where to get the source code. In order to be able to build Thunderbird - you will need the mozilla-central repository as well as the comm-central repository (where this README lives). As such the two projects share a lot of code and much of the documentation for one will apply, in many ways, to the other. Thunderbird is built on the Mozilla platform, the same base that Firefox is built from. This README will try and give you the basics that you need to get started, more comprehensive documentation is available on the Thunderbird Developer Website. It is based on the same platform that Firefox uses. Thunderbird is a powerful and customizable open source email client with lots of users.