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HowToBuild38

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Cameron Kaiser edited this page Aug 4, 2016 · 3 revisions

This document only covers the mozilla-esr38 branch, from which TenFourFox 38 is built. It does not cover any other version. This version is now obsolete and will not receive further updates.

Warning

These build instructions are always subject to change. You should be familiar with how Mozilla offers its source code and how to build Mozilla applications before you attempt these steps.

Prerequisites

10.4Fx is currently built from Mozilla's Mercurial repository with our own changesets applied on top. This is not a task for the faint of heart, but here's how we do it.

  • At minimum you will need a G4 or G5 (G5 recommended), 10.4.11, Xcode 2.5, 1.5GB of RAM and 10GB disk space. The build should work on a G3, but has not been tested on it. Just for your interest, TenFourFox is built on a quad G5 with 16GB of RAM, because compilers like RAM. In this configuration, with Energy Saver set to Highest Performance, it takes approximately two hours to kick out a single architecture build, and a few minutes longer for a debugging build. Plan accordingly.

    • Although Mozilla 38 requires gcc 4.7 or higher, TenFourFox is actually still built with gcc 4.6.x (specifically 4.6.3 or 4.6.4), from MacPorts (see below), using a compatibility shim. However, although gcc 4.0.1 and gcc 4.2 are no longer supported, you must still install Xcode for certain other prerequisites.
      • Later versions of gcc have been used in limited situations, and may work, but are not yet supported -- if you use one of these, remove the 4.6 compatibility shim from the changesets first (see below for where to get the changesets) before applying them. The particular changeset number varies, but grepping for gcc 4.6 backports will find it. (4.8 is available from MacPorts also, and does work on PowerPC.)
    • Building on 10.5.8 and/or with Xcode 3 should work, but linking against the 10.5 SDK is not supported. Note that the browser can still be built on 10.5.8, and will still run on 10.5.8, but the only allowed target will be a 10.4-compatible browser.
    • If your compiler is compiled for 10.5, the browser will use the 10.4 SDK, but wind up linked against your 10.5-only libgcc and libstdc++. If you intend to use your build on a 10.4 system, you will need to replace them with 10.4-compatible libraries. The easiest source is a TenFourFox binary package; see below (under Distributing the executable). It is also possible, though involved, to make a cross-building gcc; see issue 52.
    • clang is not supported. However, it may be possible to do a cross-build on 10.6.8 using a cross-compiling version of gcc. Good luck, let us know if it works. It is not possible to build 10.4Fx on 10.7 or any later version of OS X.

  • Install MacPorts, using the Tiger dmg for 10.4 or the Leopard dmg for 10.5 (Fink users, see below). Note that MacPorts does not always have the most current release up to date for 10.4 or 10.5, but you can still get whatever the most recently updated historical version was from the MacPorts download repository -- you need only grab the most recent 10.4 or 10.5 version available, because we will immediately force it to self-update in the next step (read on).

  • We need to install not only Mercurial, a new Python and a new gcc, but we'll also need Mozilla's preferred autoconf and a newer GNU make to get around various bugs in Tiger's included version. Get a cup of coffee, because MacPorts likes to install everything else as a prereq for everything else.

      sudo port -v selfupdate
  sudo port install mercurial libidl autoconf213 gmake python27 gcc46 freetype
    • MacPorts' gcc46 package also includes updated bintools, including its own copy of the Xcode 3 linker, but with a bug fix to enable TenFourFox's XUL to link correctly. If your gcc46 port was built on or prior to December 2012, you probably have a version with the bug in it. At minimum update ld64, or just update the whole compiler toolchain entirely. See issue 52.
    • The old ported Xcode 3 ld used to build TenFourFox 17 and earlier is no longer needed.

  • Somewhere in the 31-37 timeframe, stripping builds created with gcc 4.6 started to fail due to what appears to be a compiler bug. To fix this requires a modified strip binary (renamed strip7 so it does not conflict with the regular strip) that ignores the variant N_SECTs this compiler can generate. You should not use this strip tool for other purposes, as it is intentionally loose with the specification, and you do not need to install it if you are only building a debug or non-stripped build for your own use. Decompress the binary and put it in /opt/local/bin/strip7 (the configure script is hardcoded to this location). You can get it from SourceForge.

  • Finally, you must install the TenFourFox debugger, because the gdb available with any PowerPC Xcode does not properly grok debugging symbols generated by later gcc versions. At least patchlevel 2 is required for the current version of 10.4Fx. Decompress and copy the binary to /usr/local/bin/gdb7 or wherever it is convenient. Although you can use it to replace your current gdb, it's probably safer that you do not. You can also get it from SourceForge.

Building TenFourFox 38 from Firefox 38ESR

TenFourFox 38 was based on the 38ESR release.

  • In your nice fat source drive, hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr38 (or the desired revision).

    • Did the Mozilla tree change after you cloned it? If your changesets are against tip, STOP. Do an hg pull and hg up right now to make sure your tree is current.

  • Grab the most current stable (not unstable) changesets from the TenFourFox SourceForge download repository and unzip them somewhere.

  • Serially, in numerical order, hg import each changeset. This is the most difficult step because some source files may require manually merging individually and then resolving them with hg resolve -m afterwards.

  • Select your desired configuration (any of the *.mozcfg files) and copy it to .mozconfig in the root of the repo. These configurations should be self-explanatory. For the gory details, see Configuring Build Options at MDN, but in general, you should avoid changing the standard build configurations unless you know exactly what you are doing. Use the mozconfigs that came with this most current revision if at all possible, because the options are periodically upgraded and changed as the build system gets modified, and old configurations may fail inexplicably.

    • G4 and G5 owners: if you want to test the AltiVec (VMX) code paths apart from the standard mozcfg files, you should include --enable-tenfourfox-vmx in your custom .mozconfig or it will be compiled without AltiVec/VMX acceleration.
    • G5 owners ONLY: if you want to test the G5-specific code paths apart from the standard G5.mozcfg, you should include --enable-tenfourfox-g5 in your custom .mozconfig or the regular code paths will be used instead of the G5-specific ones. This does not enable VMX; if you want that, specify it too. You may also need to add -D_PPC970_ to your compiler strings so that non-Mozilla libraries and JavaScript properly select the correct architecture optimizations. Although you don't need this, the browser will run substantially more poorly if you don't.
    • Intel owners ONLY: Intel builds for TenFourFox 38 do not work. You can fix this! Good luck; submit patches if you get it operational.

  • (Optional but recommended) Edit netwerk/protocols/http/OptimizedFor.h and set the string to something human-readable about the configuration you're building for. This string should be relatively short, and will appear after the TenFourFox/ in the user agent string.

  • (Optional) If you want to change the reported version numbers (say, to get rid of that pre tag), alter browser/config/version.txt for the reported browser version, and config/milestone.txt for the reported Gecko version. You should revert these changes before pulling source again or you will have to merge them!

  • If you are cleaning out an old build, be sure to rm -rf configure obj-ff-dbg/ first. Then,

      autoconf213
  gmake -f client.mk build

Known build issues

  • Until issue 202 is fixed, you will get spurious errors setting up the Python environment. You can ignore these for now.
  • You will receive warnings about N_SECT while linking XUL. These are harmless. If you actually get an error and it doesn't build, then somehow you are using the original strip. Check your binaries carefully.

Building from a tarball

Depending on the space you have, or your general antipathy towards Mercurial, or your need for an old version of Firefox, you may prefer to build from one of the source archives. The easiest way to do this is to download the archive and expand it, then turn it into a repo with the following (done at the root of the unpacked archive):

hg init
hg add
hg commit

This will create a new blank repo, add everything to it, and then commit. Note that the commit does not restore history; there is no history. Instead, it is as if you started from whole cloth. On the other hand, the resulting repo is considerably smaller and probably easier and faster to work with (but you should not do this if you plan to do development, since you will probably want that history if you screw up).

Once you've done that, resume from step 2 above, since this will now act as your "cloned repo." For old versions of Firefox, you should probably use the 10.4Fx patches that correspond to that rather than the most current changesets, obviously.

Running and debugging

If the build worked, try out your binary in the TenFourFox debugger. We will assume you installed it to /usr/local/bin/gdb7 or somewhere else otherwise suitable in your path:

cd obj-ff-dbg/dist/TenFourFox.app/Contents/MacOS (or, if in Debug mode, TenFourFoxDebug.app)

gdb7 firefox

At the (gdb) prompt, run

If the build appeared to work, but the browser crashes in an unusual objc symbol when you try to run it or quit, you may have encountered issue 169 which is due to incorrect linker code generation. Make sure you are using the fixed ld (see the prerequisites section).

If you receive strange Die errors in the debugger and backtraces don't work properly, you need to upgrade your debugger (or you're using the one that Apple provided, which won't work anymore).

Distributing the executable

Because the new compiler links against its own libgcc and libstdc++, if you intend to make a build to generally distribute or use on another computer, you will need to include these libraries and update the linkage to point to the included copies. The tool 104fx_copy.sh (in the root) will help you with this. Make it executable with chmod +x if necessary, then simply type ./104fx_copy.sh [destination name.app] and the built binary will be copied to the destination name (which should be the new app bundle filename) and its linkages updated to be internal. This should be the last step you do before release since the binary it generates is completely standalone and disconnected from the build system.

If you built on 10.5 with a compiler that was also built on 10.5, your built browser will only work on 10.5 (despite using the 10.4 SDK) because the gcc 4.6.x libgcc and libstdc++ are linked against the 10.5 SDK, not 10.4. The easiest way to solve this problem is to replace libgcc_s.1.dylib and libstdc++.6.dylib in your browser package with the ones from a "real" TenFourFox application package and then your build will "just work" on both operating systems. If this is not acceptable, it is possible, though involved, to build a cross-compiling 10.5 gcc that will create 10.4-compatible binaries; see issue 52.

Alternative: Build with Fink (experimental)

If you prefer Fink to MacPorts, David Fang is maintaining a Fink package. You should consider this package experimental. Install Fink and the unstable tree, and do fink install tenfourfox. This will install all prerequisites and build the browser, and a .deb will be generated. You can start the executable from /Applications/Fink/TenFourFox.app. This may not yet be available for the most current version.

Keeping up

Your repo is now a fully functional clone of the Firefox source repo with the patches for 10.4Fx. If you want to use this as your basis to do additional pulls against Mozilla's repo, you can (after committing your local changes, of course), but you should hg rebase after each pull so that the local TenFourFox changesets float to the top.

Inevitably there will be merge conflicts, which you will need to manually resolve, mark with hg resolve -m and then continue the rebase with hg rebase --continue. NEVER hg merge!

Once the rebase is complete, you will be able to continue building and working with the repo in a sane state. Like any sane SCM, merge changes you made will be reflected in your changesets.

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