Consolidate thunderbird Ubuntu packaging with Debian for versions >= 78

[Amr Ibrahim]

I suggest consolidating the thunderbird Ubuntu packaging with Debian for versions >= 78. Now that the lightning calendar extension is part of thunderbird, the thunderbird packaging between Ubuntu and Debian is getting closer except for the naming of the locale packages.

The latest thunderbird version always gets updated in Debian 10 stable-security and Debian 9 oldstable-security since thunderbird follows the Firefox ESR versioning and Debian follows that. Ubuntu does a similar thing with its stable LTS releases, and hence could benefit from the Debian packaging. And when a new major release of Thunderbird is out, it gets updated in Debian unstable/experimental then backported to stable and oldstable. A similar thing happens in Ubuntu development and stable LTS releases.

So I suggest a plan like this:
1. Transition the thunderbird locale packages in Ubuntu to the Debian naming
2. Merge the latest thunderbird with Debian unstable/experimental to Ubuntu development

If the Debian maintainer agrees, the Ubuntu packaging could also happen in Debian salsa similar to what is already happening with GNOME packaging.

I think sharing the thunderbird packaging between Ubuntu and Debian is beneficial to both sides going forward in the future, and especially if thunderbird packaging gets more complicated to backport to stable releases.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Simon Iremonger (ubuntu-iremonger)]

What is now happening, in any case, is Ubuntu LTS Thunderbird packaging is lagging behind on important security updates. I think a consideration of sharing packaging could help this, in my opinion, unless there is a problem with the arrangement ...... may be key differences in using separate vs. included libnss and so-on ....