How to know if/when a package will be updated?

Question

This is an update process question.

After the latest Thunderbird update (version 102), I realized my Tbsync add-on was now incompatible. Tbsync has been updated to v4 to catch up to TB 102, but my current Tbsync version is 3.0.2 and Thunderbird can't find any updates available in the repositories.

So I wondered what the last Tbsync version was in the repositories and found this page which tells me that the available versions for Tbsync go from v2 for Ubuntu 20.04 to v3 for Ubuntu 22.10. And to make it worse, I'm still running 18.04...

So I guess my questions are :

• how do I know which version is currently available for 18.04 (which is supposed to be still maintained)?
• how do I know if/when v4 will be available for any distrib?
• how come I end up with unusable software with no warning, and how a newbie is supposed to manage, without resorting to manual .deb install? This is not a rhetorical question for complaining but rather, what is the product UX view on this and what is at stake here?

Answer 1

If you are concerned with how to install the TbSync add-on in your Ubuntu version, there are two options to install it in a way that does not depend on the version in Ubuntu repos. By using either of them you should end up with TbSync 4.3 installed.

Option 1

1. Open Thunderbird and click on the hamburger menu (≡) on the top right → Add-ons and Themes.

   

2. In the Find more add-ons search box search for "tbsync". This should open a new tab.

   

3. In the new tab click the Add to Thunderbird button for the TbSync extension and then click Add on the pop-up.

   

Option 2

1. Download the TbSync-beta.xpi file from TbSync's Releases page on GitHub.

2. Open Thunderbird and click on the hamburger menu (≡) on the top right → Add-ons and Themes.

   

3. Click the cog icon and select Install Add-on From File...

   

4. Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the file, select the file and click Open.

   

5. Click Add on the pop-up window.