We are working hard on getting the first release candidate for Sunbird and Lightning 1.0 Beta 1 out and since our nightly testers have surely noticed that the latest nightlies have been named “1.0b1pre” I wanted to give a short update.
We have been working on releasing the beta since last Wednesday. To make releasing easier, we have decided to make use of the Thunderbird release automation scripts. This is also the reason the version number changed to 1.0b1pre. Since the directory structure of Calendar is a bit different to what Thunderbird and Firefox use, we had some complications that need to be mangled out first. Unfortunately, building is a lengthy process (it takes a while until we are able to find out what went wrong) and Mozilla Messaging’s Release Engineering is in a different timezone (6 hours difference), things are taking a bit longer than I anticipated.
Nevertheless, I am confident that we will be able to publish our release candidate in the next week, and depending on if we find further blocking issues or not, release 1.0 Beta 1 in the next 2-3 weeks. Also, for the next release the process should be much quicker since we’ve now had the time to take care of the one-time issues (missing access, minor bugs in our build system, etc.)
Update: Linux and Windows builds of RC1 have succeeded! The fix for Mac is on its way, we now just need to take care of some branching issues and let the Mac box build.
nathaneik 
Patrick 
Durruti 
Stefan21 
Robert K. 
Laraus 
bob 
Miami 
Dempsey 
Fallen 
Christina 
Marecki 
Paul Gritt 
I’m really looking forward to the beta release! I’m currently having an issue with google calendars set to Cached. If I set them as cached, then each calendar shows all the events for all other calendars. So if I have 3 calendars (set to cached), I see each event 3 times, one for each calendar color. If I set the caching off and restart, then it’s back to normal (but I lose the caching functionality of course).
Ed, take a look at this bug. Unfortunately the fix for this bug is quite a substantial change, so we can’t take it for 1.0b1. I hope the uncached mode is sufficient for now though.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479867
Hello,
Keep up the good work.
I have two questions:
1. How do you forward an event to someone else?
2. I have a version of 20091126033329, and I have no alarms popping up against a Caldav calendar.
If you want I can turn debug mode on if you need log or …do not hesitate
Kind Regards
Hello
First of all, I would thank you for your good work
Then I have one question and possibly one bug
Q: How do you forward an event to someone?
B: No Alarm is popping up for event with a Caldav Calendar.
Thunberbird 3.0 RC2
Lightning 1.0pre 20091126033329
Thanks
Great, looking forward to the release… I’m using 64-bit Ubuntu so I can’t really use the Nightly. Have a couple of Mac users that can’t open my invitations now, it has been fixed for > 1 year; but it’s not in 0.9…
Keep up the good work!
Great work! Thanks for all the effort. TB&Lightning&Gdata&Googlecal are central to my daily planning.
Cas.
(PS: Thanks for fixing ‘[Bug 523987] Dismissing alarms doesn’t work with Provider for Google Calendar’.)
One annoying thing I noticed a few days ago was when Sunbird nightlies of the comm-1.9.1 branch were “demoted” from 1.0pre to 1.0b1pre, causing “version incompatibilities” in extensions (including Mozilla’s own DOM Inspector) which have 1.0pre as their minVersion for Sunbird.
Where I can find the right release for TB 3.1a1pre?
Or I can safely edit install.rdf from 1.0b1?
Ok I find it
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-central/
Ciao.
today (december 8th 2009) thunderbird 3.0 final is gonna be published. i wonder what happens with the still nonexistant final calendar/lightning/sunbird that would work together normally without beta/nightly messing or xpi patching/editing etc.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases
please act at last and speed up your development and release processes. lightning development process is really a nightmare. get some funding and hire some people who know what they are doing.
why thank you.
hi i just update thunderbird and i can not use lightning 9.0 how can i recover my data
use the nightlies of calendar xpi at
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-central/
to make it work with the thunderbird 3.0 final.
what a pitty that calendar team dudes work so slowly and missed the target date for the final thunderbird 3.0
sunbird lightning calendar what a mess even with their project subproject codenames and so forth.
guess microsoft is the better guys with their outlook and exchange solution. you cant beat em. at least calendar and mozilla messaging dudes just dont seem to be eager enough to become a real competition.
sucketh.
Hello Folks,
unfortunately, its not so easy as you make it sound. Funding a single developer full time can mean at least 60k per year. Thats not an amount of money easily spent.
We are working on 1.0b1, but we don’t have the manpower to synchronize our releases with Thunderbird and I don’t think that is what you should expect.
Of course Microsoft has a good standpoint, they have paid developers, release engineering, user experience and QA, but remember they also sell their Product for a retail price of currently $109.95. Would you, and do you think everyone else would be willing to pay this price for a full Lightning version? I believe not.
I will post an update shortly, the short version is we are working on making the buildbots produce the builds, but are still stumbling upon many errors. These will not show up for the next release, but this time it will take a bit longer.
Thank you for your understanding,
Philipp
I just upgraded to Thunderbird 3 and, of course, I wanted to have Lightning.
I gave a try to the nightly build but I could not install it (not a supported version?).
Would you please fix the nightly build so it can be installed with TB 3.
I understand you are a small team and can not release the final release with TB but having the nightly alternative would be a plus!
Thanks
the nightly xpi needs to get downloaded to your desktop for example. and then drag/drop it to your extensions window inside thunderbird.
it always works like this. i have nightlies installed and running fine in tb 3.0
duh.
Just drag the link to the XPI from Firefox to Thunderbird Add-ons. I don’t know why Mozilla keeps telling people to download when drag&drop just works.
The RC builds don’t seem to be up yet, or am I looking in the wrong place?
Thanks for all your work on Lightning. I’ve become very dependent on Lightning and wish the Thunderbird team or someone would have warned about the incompatibility issue. I would not have updated Thunderbird. When the new RC is ready will it detect our data?
Unlike some of the others that have posted I was told by Thunderbird that Lighting wasn’t supported when I installed. I installed anyway after reading this site expecting I could use the nightly builds. I haven’t yet been successful and was hoping I might get a little assistance. I have downloaded the extensions from the build site and saved those to the extensions folder. Every time I start Thunderbird it says I have two extensions and ask if I would like to install them, I do and then try to configure them and Thunderbird tells me they are not compatible. Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong? (Win7 64bit)
Keep up the great work Lighting team. I get Outlook for free and still won’t use it and really look forward to getting Lightning back up and running.
Yea!!!! Downloaded the most recent nightly, dragged it into the Add-ons/Extensions window, rebooted and there it was!!!!
Thanks you, Thank you, Thank you…..
I find it a little bit ‘off’ that people are criticising the slower release pace than that of Thunderbird. What we pay (ie nothing) and what we get (something that is arguably a much better product that it’s main competitor) are the important things.
Granted, those using TB/Lightning for work might find it unrealistic to be without their calendar, but this can be solved fairly easily.
Keep up the good work guys!
How are you guys managing to get the nightlies installed? I tried with 12/09, and now again on 12/10; drag and drop to the TBird 3.0 Add-ons window; and I get:
Provider for Google Calendar 0.6pre could not be installed because it is not compatible with Thunderbird 3.0.
Lightning 1.1a1pre could not be installed because it is not compatible with Thunderbird 3.0.
jamullian: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/
The synchronization with Caldav doesn’t work anymore with the last nigthly ( worked fine with lightning 0.9 on TB 2)
hudus: Thanks. [I was using