Real World Mozilla Build Mozilla Lab

Dive into Mozilla > Dive into Mozilla Day 2 > Build Mozilla Lab

Overview

This lab is designed to give you first-hand experience building Mozilla from source code. This includes setting-up a proper development/build environment, using CVS to obtain the code, configuring your build, and actually doing a complete build.

By the end of this lab you should have a functioning debug trunk build of Firefox, which we'll use for the remainder of the week for our other development work.

Instructions

The lab machines have already been set-up to use MSVC 8 and MozillaBuild RC1. You only need to run Mozilla-Build MSVC 8.bat (there is a link on the desktop) to begin (i.e., you shouldn't need to install anything).

1. Create a directory called C:\ff to hold the source
2. Make sure the tree is not red on tinderbox
3. Check-out the Firefox code from CVS into C:\ff (instructions are here). You can use either of the following CVSROOT values:
   •  :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
   •  :pserver:anonymous@hera.senecac.on.ca:/cvsroot
4. Create a .mozconfig file (instructions are here) in C:\ff\mozilla with the following:
   • Use an Object Directory (OBJDIR) named objdir
   • Disable Optimization
   • Enable Debugging
   • Use Shared libraries instead of Static
5. Build the source (instructions are here)
6. wait, wait, wait...NOTE: the build process (a debug build) takes approximately 1 hour to complete in the lab.
7. Test your new browser:
   1. Set the following environment variables to turn-off assertion dialogs and allow for multiple versions of the browser to be run simultaneously:
      • export XPCOM_DEBUG_BREAK=warn
      • export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
   2. Run the browser as follows: C:\ff\mozilla\objdir\dist\bin\firefox -Profilemanager
   3. When prompted, create a new profile called development
   4. In the address bar, enter the following URI and note the build information: about: