Thunderbird is a powerful and customizable open source email client with many users. It is based on the same platform that Firefox uses.
This README will try and give you the basics that you need to get started, more comprehensive documentation is available on the Thunderbird Developer Website.
We also have documentation from this repository in a rendered version at Thunderbird Source Tree Documentation.
Thunderbird is built on the Mozilla platform, the same base that Firefox is built from. As such, the two projects share a lot of code and much of the documentation for one will apply to the other.
In order to be able to build Thunderbird - you will need the mozilla-central repository as well as the comm-central repository (where this README lives). Check out our Getting Started documentation for instructions on how and where to get the source code.
The mozilla-central repository contains the Firefox codebase and all of the platform code. The comm-central repository is added as a subdirectory "comm/" under mozilla-central. This contains the code for Thunderbird.
Follow the Building Thunderbird guide to get set up and build Thunderbird.
We have a complete listing of the ways in which you can get involved with Thunderbird on our website. Below are some quick references from that page that you can use if you are looking to contribute to Thunderbird core right away.
If you want to participate in discussions about Thunderbird development, there are two main mailing lists you want to join.
- Thunderbird Planning: This moderated mailing list is for higher level topics like: the future of Thunderbird, potential features, and changes that you would like to see happen. It is also used to discuss a variety of broader issues around community and governance of the project.
- Thunderbird Developers: A moderated mailing list for discussing engineering plans for Thunderbird. It is a place where you can raise questions and ideas for core Thunderbird development.
If you want to ask questions about how to hack on Thunderbird, the Matrix room you want to join is #maildev:mozilla.org.
Thunderbird uses Bugzilla for reporting and tracking bugs. If you want to become a contributor to Thunderbird, you will need an account on Bugzilla.
Feature requests should be submitted to Mozilla Connect.