Topics in Mozilla Development

Introduction

This page is a list of topics for those learning Mozilla development, which have on-line learning materials available. It is presented for those interested in focusing on a select set of topics, or who prefer to study and learn in non-linear fashion.

Please feel free to add to this list any topics you feel should be covered.

Topics by Category

Mozilla Community Practices

• Mozilla Community Overview (Mike Beltzner)
• IRC introduction

Build Related

• How the Build Works (J. Paul Reed)
• Release Builds: from source tree to exe (Rob Helmer)
• Build Mozilla Lab
• Incremental Build Lab
• Overview of the makefile macros

Development Practices

• Creating, applying, and backing-out Patches (diff, patch)
• Using cvsdo
• Adding directories to CVS
• Debugging C++ (VS.NET) and JS (Venkman) source code

Working with Source Code

• Introduction to source code indexers
• A live example of using LXR

Developing Mozilla

• Creating an XPCOM Component
• Writing xpcshell unit tests
• The Life-cycle of a Bug (Mike Connor)
• Using jar.mn files
• Getting in the installer: the packages-static files
• Live example showing how to make a change to the browser in the tree
• Live example showing how to make a change to the browser as an extension

Firefox Development Best Practices

• The JS style guide
• Developing with localization in mind
• Using the command architecture
• Developing with extensions in mind
• Being Ts/Tp aware
• Being Cross-Platform aware