Getting Started

What You Need to Know
Mozilla Code Base
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, in many ways, to the other. If at any point you are looking for answers that you can't find here, try looking at Mozilla's Developer site called: MDN.
Mercurial Version Control
Mozilla uses the Mercurial version control software to propose, review, incorporate, and log changes to its code. In order to contribute to Thunderbird, you will need to be able to use this software.
Information for how to install Mercurial is available via the download page on their wiki.
Get the Source
The source code requires 3.6GB of free space or more and additionally 5GB or more for default build.
For Windows Users: If you are using Windows, you will want to follow instructions on the Windows Build Prerequisities page before getting the source and building Thunderbird.
Windows Build Prerequisites
Get the latest Mozilla source code from Mozilla's mozilla-central Mercurial code repository, and check it out into a local directory source (or however you want to call it). Then, get the latest Thunderbird source code from Mozilla's comm-central Mercurial code repository. It now needs to be placed inside the Mozilla source code, in a directory named comm/:
hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central source/
cd source/
hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central comm/
mozilla-central vs. comm-central
Mozilla-central will build Firefox without the comm-central repo present and a few options set (detailed on the Building Thunderbird page). Mozilla-central is the Firefox codebase and comm-central features the additions that turn Firefox into Thunderbird.
What's Next
Let's build the latest Thunderbird:
Building Thunderbird

About Thunderbird

Next - Contributing to Thunderbird

Building Thunderbird

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What You Need to Know

Mozilla Code Base

Mercurial Version Control

Get the Source

mozilla-central vs. comm-central

What's Next