User:Jamesboston

Profile

James Boston is a Computer Programmer.

Blog & homepage:
jamesboston.ca

Contact:
Email james at the domain that has my name or look for me on irc:
jboston on irc://irc.mozilla.org/seneca

Projects

Fixing nsIProcess

Project page: Fixing nsIProcess

The API in Firefox for managing external processes has never been fully implemented. This project aims to implement the existing API and extend the API to include inter-process communication.

Mozilla Developer Resource Kit

Project page: Mozilla Developer Resource Kit

Creating a package that contains everything a developer needs, including documentation, to get started with Firefox. The plan is to make it available as a live Fedora DVD for developers in countries where bandwidth is scarce.

Portable DXR

Project page: Portable DXR

This is closely related to the MDRK. The aim is to package the Mozilla developer documentation and the DXR source browsing tool in an extension that can be easily distributed/installed mostly likely as a XUL/Prism application. As an added bonus, this is a group project where the team members are experimenting with using traditional project planning tools and open source development methods.

Software

Process Manager Extension

A binary XPCOM extension that allows processes external to Firefox to be started and stopped. Currently only Win32 is supported. It is used in the SHTTPD extension.

Further notes on usage: http://jamesboston.ca/cms/node/41

Download: http://jamesboston.ca/extensions/processmanager.xpi

Source: http://jamesboston.ca/extensions/processmanager.zip

SHTTPD Extension

This is a proof of concept. Installing this extension will start a tiny webserver that runs locally. The purpose of this is to eventually provide a way to distribute web application as extensions so they can be run locally/offline. At present, when the browser starts the server also starts and installs an icon to the system tray. It only runs on Win32 machines.

Download: http://jamesboston.ca/extensions/shttpd.xpi

(The server is licensed as beerware and is available on its own at http://shttpd.sourceforge.net/).

Open in Editor Extension

This extension will open source code files from http://mxr.mozilla.org in an editor on the users machine. Simply right click on the loaded page and select the Open in Editor option from the pop up context menu. The user may choose any editor through preference settings. If no preferences are selected the extension defaults to gedit on Linux, notepad on Windows, and (currently) nothing on OS X.

Download: http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/imgs/Openineditor.xpi

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Building Firefox

Building on Windows Vista

Install Visual Studio: (The express version will work.)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700736.aspx

Get Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit Update for Windows Vista:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4377f86d-c913-4b5c-b87e-ef72e5b4e065&DisplayLang=en 

Download and install Mozilla Build, a package of software prereqs: (If you get a message saying this application did not install properly then you should see a windows dialog giving you the option to re-install with the 'correct settings'. After that all should be well.)

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/libraries/win32/MozillaBuildSetup-1.3.exe

Open a shell window by right clicking and using admin privileges: (The example here is for Visual Studio 2005. The name of the bat file you use should match the directory that Visual Studio is installed in.)

c:\mozilla-build\start-msvc8.bat

If you are attempting to build Firefox 3.1 you can checkout the source using mercurial as described below. When creating a working directory and checking out the source it doesn't really matter where you put it, but avoid paths that contain spaces. If your user name doesn't have space you can checkout the source to your home directory like this:

cd
mkdir mozilla
cd mozilla
hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ src

It is still possible to checkout older versions of Firefox using cvs as described below but Mercurial is preferred:

cd
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot co mozilla/client.mk
cd ~/mozilla
make -f client.mk checkout MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser

Create and open a hidden file called .mozconfig in your home directory:

notepad.exe ~/.mozconfig

Add the following lines to .mozconfig

# My first mozilla config
. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/obj-@CONFIG_GUESS@
ac_add_options --disable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-static --enable-shared

If you are using a multi-core computer for building, you can try adding a flag to speed up compile times. Use a value of ((# of cores)*2)+1 (ie. five for two cores):

mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS=-j5

Visual Studio 2008 users may also need to add one or more of the following to .mozconfig

ac_add_options --disable-xpconnect-idispatch
ac_add_options --disable-activex
ac_add_options --disable-activex-scripting
ac_add_options --disable-accessibility
ac_add_options --disable-parental-controls

Start the build:

cd ~/mozilla/src
make -f client.mk build

Once the build is finished you should set the following environment variable to turn-off assertion dialogs:

export XPCOM_DEBUG_BREAK=warn

When you run Firefox for the first time, create and select a new profile called "development" (or any name of your choice) to avoid corrupting your current profile. You can do this while running your current version of Firefox using these command line options:

~/mozilla/src/obj*/dist/bin/firefox -Profilemanager -no-remote

The finished build can be found in the ~/mozilla/src/obj*/dist/bin directory.

Run the file "mozilla" or "firefox", not the binary "mozilla-bin" or "firefox-bin".

For more detailed info about the windows build requirements visit Mozilla Developer Center.

For more detailed information about Mozilla building visit Real World Mozilla Build Lab.

For more info about Visual Studio 2008 problems see Lukas Blakk's blog.

For more information on using Mercurial to checkout Mozilla code see Mozilla Source Code.

Building on Windows XP

The instructions are the same as for Windows Vista. For Firefox 3, the Vista SDK is also required. However, try adding the following additional line to your .mozconfig file first:

ac_add_options --disable-vista-sdk-requirements

Another problem is that you may not be able to use your home directory because the path almost certainly has spaces. If that is the case, just put the mozilla directory in your root (ie. C:\mozilla) and put the .mozconfig file in that directory.

Building on Ubuntu and Fedora

Install build pre-requisites for Fedora 9 users:

su -c "yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' 'Development Libraries' 'GNOME Software Development'"
su -c "yum install mercurial autoconf213"

Install Firefox 3 build re-requisites for Ubuntu 8.04 users:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get build-dep firefox-3.0
sudo apt-get install mercurial libasound2 libasound2-dev curl libcurl4-gnutls-dev

Checkout the source:

mkdir ~/mozilla
cd ~/mozilla
hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ src

Create and open a hidden file called .mozconfig in your home directory:

gedit ~/.mozconfig

Add the following lines to .mozconfig

# My first mozilla config
. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/obj-@CONFIG_GUESS@
ac_add_options --disable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-static --enable-shared

See the Windows Vista notes above about adding a flag to .mozconfig to speed up the compile.

Start the build:

cd ~/mozilla/src
make -f client.mk build

Here is a log of the output from building Firefox 3.1 on Ubuntu 8.04:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/imgs/Build_output.txt.zip

Once the build is finished you should set the following environment variable to turn-off assertion dialogs:

export XPCOM_DEBUG_BREAK=warn

When you run Firefox for the first time, create and select a new profile called "development" (or any name of your choice) to avoid corrupting your current profile. You can do this while running your current version of Firefox using these command line options:

~/mozilla/src/obj*/dist/bin/firefox -Profilemanager -no-remote

The finished build can be found in the ~/mozilla/src/obj*/dist/bin directory.

Run the file "mozilla" or "firefox", not the binary "mozilla-bin" or "firefox-bin"

For more detailed information visit Real World Mozilla Build Lab.

Building on OS X

Build pre-requisites and instructions for OS X can also be found at the Mozilla Developer Center.

If you have built Firefox in your home directory and are trying to start it from the command line try these steps:

cd ~/mozilla/src/obj*/dist/MinefieldDebug.app/Contents/MacOS
./firefox -Profilemanager

Tunneling a VNC session

Instruction page

One of the Mac minis in the ORI area is configured to accept VNC connections, but without an SSH tunnel it's too slow to be useful. These instructions will help you get setup.