The developers of the posterbird postal client announced the integration of components written in Rust into the code base. The upcoming significant release of Thunderbird, expected in July this year, will include code implementing the Microsoft Exchange Web Services postal protocol in Rust. Later, support for accessing the calendar and address book of Microsoft Exchange will be added. This built-in implementation will eliminate the need for external add-ons for Microsoft Exchange support.
Using the RUST language to implement this functionality is expected to reduce errors when working with memory, improve performance compared to JavaScript, and align with the existing ecosystem developing email modules in Rust. The integration of development tools in Rust simplifies the process as Rust is already utilized in Firefox, allowing Thunderbird to utilize existing infrastructure for testing and continuous integration. Additionally, XPCOM (Cross-Platform Component Object Model) will enable interaction between Rust components and code in C++ and JavaScript.
Despite the benefits of Rust support, challenges exist in maintaining the code base, creating necessary bindings, and adapting asynchronous processors to work with Rust code that does not align with Rust’s model of asynchronous operations.