Migration to the snap issues

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli]

After migrating to the snap, I noticed the following:
- the launcher icon disappeared (I guess it’s because the .desktop file is now "thunderbird_thunderbird.desktop"
- the snap migration took a good 5 minutes on my machine (I guess it’s the copy of the email folder), without any feedbacks that something is happening if you don’t look at ps output. You don’t have any visual feedback about the migration and we should have a progress window (maybe zenity?) to reassure on this one time transition
- all unread emails triggered notification (I guess it’s because the state is considered "New") on any folders.
- I know have 2 15G folders now: ~/snap/thunderbird/common/ and ~/.thunderbird. I think the latter was the old one which is unused right now and it should be cleaned up after the migration to the snap?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 24.04
Package: thunderbird 2:1snap1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.8.0-11.11-generic 6.8.0-rc4
Uname: Linux 6.8.0-11-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia zfs
ApportVersion: 2.28.0-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Apr 18 09:28:35 2024
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-04-24 (1455 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
SnapChanges:
 Identifiant État Descendance Prêt Résumé
 700 Done 2024-04-18T09:06:12+02:00 2024-04-18T09:07:34+02:00 Installer le paquet Snap "thunderbird"
SourcePackage: thunderbird
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The launcher icon issue getting removed should be fixed with this upload
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/2:1snap1-0ubuntu2

The other issues need to be fixed in the snap and not the deb wrapper, one first change was to use cp -a
https://github.com/ubuntu/thunderbird/commit/390cb82a

I'm unsure about deleting ~/.thunderbird, it could be that some users are running the upstream binaries and will confused about it, maybe that's another one where we should inform the user instead?

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

yeah, informing the user will go a long way IMHO!

[Isny (isny)]

Came here for the missing icon, but the transition was also slow; I ended up opening five or more instances of thunderbird when starting up.

[Pablo Angulo (pablo-angulo)]

As mentioned in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/2056434/comments/15 , if there is not enough free space for copying the .thunderbird folder to its new snap location, then the migration will not be done, thunderbird will open as new, and the user will not be notified at all. Creating a soft link will not do. Moving the folder from ~/.thunberdird to ~/snap/thunderbird/common/ did work.

[Tarek Loubani (tareko)]

I similarly had this issue due to the .thunderbird folder being too large. As with #5, moving the folder to ~/snap/thunderbird/common worked.

[Heather Ellsworth (hellsworth1)]

Note these meta upstream bugs:
- [meta] Repackage Thunderbird as a Snap package: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1498413
- [meta] Tracking bug for Snap issues: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1665641