Assignment 1 (yshen6)

build firefox on Windows

Authors

Yi Shen

Introduction

In order to build firefox on windows, my first step was search “how to build firefox on Windows” on Google. Then I followed the instructions on David Humphrey's website.

Software Installed

Install the compiler - Visual Studio.NET 2005
Install Cygwin with all packages required for building Mozilla:

  ash
  coreutils
  cvs
  diffutils
  findutils
  gawk
  grep
  libiconv
  make 3.80
  patchutils
  perl
  sed
  unzip
  zip

Create a directory c:\proj
Download and Extract Moztools to C:\proj\moztools

Steps to Complete the build

Setup environment variables and paths by creating a setup file: c:\proj\buildsetup.bat Copy and paste the given code(from David's website) to c:\proj\buildsetup.bat

@echo off

rem --- CVS Setup
SET CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
SET CVS_RSH=ssh

rem --- Setup the paths to the moztools build libraries
set MOZ_TOOLS=C:\proj\moztools
set GLIB_PREFIX=%MOZ_TOOLS%
set LIBIDL_PREFIX=%MOZ_TOOLS%

rem --- Scrub these variables first
SET INCLUDE=
SET LIB=
SET PATH=C:\;C:\windows\system32;C:\windows\system32\wbem

rem --- Prepend cygwin
SET PATH=C:\cygwin\bin;%PATH%

rem --- Setup VC8 compiler environment vars
CALL "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86

rem --- Add glib/libidl to build environment
SET PATH=%PATH%;%GLIB_PREFIX%;%GLIB_PREFIX%\bin
SET INCLUDE=%GLIB_PREFIX%\include;%INCLUDE%
SET LIB=%GLIB_PREFIX%\lib;%LIB%

rem --- moztools comes last after glib/libIDL
SET PATH=%PATH%;%MOZ_TOOLS%\bin

Run Cygwin and move into c:\proj directory
Problem1 – I have no idea how to move my current directory to c:\proj in Cygwin

$ cd ../..
$ cd cygdrive/
$ cd c
$ cd proj

Setup environment and paths

$ cmd Buildsetup.bat
c:\proj> buildsetup.bat

Log into the mozilla CVS by anonymous

Problem2 – failed: connection refused (only at school’s computer)
After handled problem2 run Cygwin again and login CVS by anonymous

C:\proj> cvs login
CVS password: anonymous

Checkout the build script:

C:\proj> cvs co mozilla/browser/config mozilla/client.mk

Cvs checkout: Updating mozilla/browser/config
U mozilla/client.mk

This create some files in C:\proj\mozilla

Move into mozilla directory and create a file .mozconfig

c:\proj\mozilla> touch .mozconfig

open .mozconfig, copy and paste the given code(from David's website).

# Building Firefox Trunk with Debugging
. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig

# Put all obj files in one place, not in src tree
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/firefox-objdir
ac_add_options --disable-static
ac_add_options --enable-shared
	
# Debug Build Setup Options
ac_add_options --disable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-debug

# I'm using Canvas for my work
ac_add_options --enable-canvas

now we can get the full source from cvs:

c:\proj\mozilla> make -f client.mk checkout

This will take a little while, then we will see a bunch of files create in c:\proj\mozilla

Now we can build it:

C:\proj\mozilla> make -f client.mk build

After more than half an hour of building, you will find firefox3.0a1 in C:\proj\mozilla\firefox-objdir\dist\bin

Problems

Problem1 - I have no idea how to move my current directory to c:\proj in Cygwin. Mark helped me move the current directory to c:\proj and create the .mozconfig by touch command.

Problem2 - I wasn’t able to log into cvs at school computer. Mark told me to use Putty to tunnel out the school firewall through matix

host Name(or IP address): matix.senecac.on.ca
Source Port: 2401
Destination: cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:2401

Login matix
Then Change cvs-mirror.mozilla.org in c:\proj\buildsetup.bat to localhost

Resources

David humphrey’s website
Mark Paruzel

Conclusions

By the instruction on David’s website and mark’s help I build firefox on my first try. But I wasn’t understand clearly about the steps of building it and why it worked that way, at least I didn’t figure out the problem by myself. So I format my hard drive and redo everything by memory and it worked again. All the steps are not too hard to follow, but the building took too long time. Now I am familiar with building firefox on windows.

Screenshot of the Build Number