Things have been a little slower lately, what with summer and family visits and so forth, but my project to support Exchange server in Thunderbird proceeds nevertheless. I’m starting to think seriously of an Alpha release.
Originally I had assummed that there would be changes required in core to support what I am doing. But so far, that has not been absolutely necessary. I had problems earlier with the database code, but I’ve managed to get around that by just using a standard nsMailDatabase object instead of doing my own version.
So I tried to build a version that could run on current Thunderbird 3.1 releases. That required staring at the build code for a couple of weeks, which I guess is the price that I pay for writing much of this extension in C++. In the end, the magic that I needed was surprisingly simple:
ifndef MOZ_STATIC_MAIL_BUILD EXTRA_DSO_LIBS = msgbsutl else SHARED_LIBRARY_LIBS = $(DEPTH)/mailnews/base/util/$(LIB_PREFIX)msgbsutl_s.$(LIB_SUFFIX) endif
I am now running my EWS extension with my normal Thunderbird profile – but I have not had the courage yet to use the email address for anything real. Fortunately, the spammers of the world have discovered my test address rkentjames@caspia.org, and are kindly providing me with a wide variety of test emails.
The question I have now is what is the minimum functionality required for an alpha release. I’ve recently added the ability to read attachments from my Exchange messages, but I don’t yet have the ability to create emails that contain attachments. I think that after I add that ability, I will have a basic email read/write capability, and will stop adding features and concentrate on fixing annoyances prior to releasing an alpha.
I’ll still be missing a zillion features, including:
- using the exchange address book
- copying and moving messages to other folders
- message filters
and a whole lot more. But the alpha application could be used to do a basic check of someone’s work email from a home Thunderbird installation.
Congrats on the significant milestone!
Great work! Look forward to seeing the Alpha!
Yep !!!!
Very nice indeed !
Congratulations, that’s really cool!
I’d be more than happy to act as a beta tester; my prio one feature would be copy/move between folders, as I have some GTD style folders and a “try to get the inbox to zero every week” personal policy.
And I can test with a really enterprisy Exchange server providing with an Global Adressbook > 200.000
…I mean Alpha tester…whatever I can test without trying (again) to get the hole c/c++ buildchain working… (last time fixing the MinGW buildchain destroyed GHC)
Again: Congratulations!
Nice work. But I think you’re going to need copying/moving messages functionality to reach MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
[...] la creación de una extensión que solucione estas cuestiones. Y precisamente eso está haciendo un desarrollador; comenzó a programar un addon, que ya estuvo probando y pronto liberará para futuras pruebas. Por [...]
Congrats; that’s a fine accomplishment!
That’s great news. Many people I know must use an Exchange server (configured as not being able to work with IMAP) and would be willing to use Thunderbird. Only a few were able, so far, to install and use the Davmail gateway (http://davmail.sourceforge.net/).
Inbuilt Exchange support in Thunderbird is really highly appreciated. Thank you very much for your work!
hi there – just ran across your site in a google search & noticed your last update was this one back in August – any recent news? still working on it?
(and if you’ve abandoned it…any chance of releasing the source?)
I’d *kill* for a way to get to my exchange mail via linux without using OWA or a VM….
Hitch: Oh yes I am still working on it, it’s just a big project. I’m seriously considering release version 0.1 based on today’s build. But I am not going to be supporting Linux unfortunately on this first release, but I will be eventually.
I can try Thunderbird witn Exchange at my job
I used TB for many years but my organisation mve from à IMAP server to EXCHANGE.
Best regards
J Monteyne: I would be delighted if you did some testing when I do the release (Real Soon Now) but the first alpha version will be quite limited in functionality, so it is not really going to be a viable replacement for IMAP yet. But I would like to know if it works at all in your environment.
Most of us can do mail with IMAP or POP on Exchange, calendar is the problem for linux users.