Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies

[Ben Bucksch]

Joshua Cranmer 🐧 wrote on 03.04.2017 18:08:
> In short: I think you need to give a lot more thought into breaking a 
> complete redesign idea into smaller modules that can be independently 
> reused, and you also need to think about how to import those modules 
> into TB in a finer-grained fashion than all-or-nothing.


FWIW, any that will be a natural fallout of any well-designed rewrite. 
Of course we wouldn't write a monolithic, take-all-or-nothing webapp, 
but we'd write components. And these could be used by the old 
Thunderbird. I'm all for that.

The important difference is:

* the new modules need to be designed for the future, not the past. This 
is why past attempts failed: Thunderbird APIs between modules are often 
unfit.

* the integration into the old Thunderbird probably takes more time than 
writing the component in the first place. By making the backport an 
explicit, separate step, you'd see that cost clearly. More importantly, 
you can separate the tasks to different teams. And you limit the risk: 
If the backport fails, you still have the new implementation.

Ben