User:Vpmirand/Assignment1

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!!!!WORK IN PROGRESS!!!!

Introduction

I first started off building Firefox on my Windows XP Professional machine using Visual Studio.Net 2003. Unfortunately I had some problems along the way and solved them by using Google.com and by asking for help in the IRC chat. When I finally built Firefox I tried to run it but wasn’t successful because it crashed on me. So I tried building it on two other hard drives and I got the same error. Since I was short on time I decided to give Linux a try and see if I would be more successful with building Firefox on a Linux operating system.

I was finally able to build Firefox successfully on Ubuntu, which took me about one night to do. This document will cover the build requirements such as hardware and software that I needed in order to build Firefox successfully. I will then discuss the steps that took me to fully complete the build and any problems that I encountered along the way. I will end it off with some useful resources that I found and used throughout the process of the build and then talk about my experience with my first open source build.

Requirements

Hardware

My computer system: 

Intel Pentium 3 Processor 450 Mhz
256 MB RAM
40 Gigabyte Hard Drive
Ubuntu

Software

Before I could install any packages or libraries I had to install build-essential, which is the synaptic package manager (i.e. Library Manager). Once I got this installed I looked at Linux Build Prerequisites to find out which libraries I needed. The following are a list of the libraries that I installed.

  • CVS
  • GTK (2.0)
  • Libxt-dev
  • Libidl-dev
  • Make

The Build

When I ran the build for the first time on Ubuntu I was bound to come in contact with some errors. The first time I ran the build I encountered an error to do with missing packages. Once that got resolved I ran the build a second time and came across another error to do with another missing package. After getting the last package installed I ran the build a third time and finally got the build to complete without any more errors.

Steps took to complete build

  • Asked Mike Lau a few questions about Ubuntu.
  • Installed the build –essential, which is the synaptic package manager (i.e. Library Manager). 
sudo apt-get install build-essential
  • Installed the CVS library, from the synaptic package manager.
  • Added environment variables to my environment script ( /etc/environment)
CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
CVS_RSH=ssh
  • Checked out the trunk.
  • Started build for Firefox.
  • Received an error during my build. The error stated that my /usr/bin/pkg-config was not found.
  • I knew I was missing a package but I wasn’t sure what the name of the package was. So I used Google to see if I could find a solution. I didn’t find any useful links so I asked Mike Lau if he had come across any errors like the one I had.
  • After speaking with Mike Lau, I got the packages that I needed.
  • I Installed packages libidl-dev and libgtk2.0-dev from the synaptic package manager.
  • After installing the packages I tried to rebuild Firefox again.
  • Received another error during my build. The error stated that it could not compile a basic X program. I knew that my int_types.h was missing so I knew that I was obviously missing a library but wasn’t sure which one.
  • I used Google again to see if anyone had faced the same problem. I found a link on Ubuntu Forums that gave me a package libgtk2.0-dev to install. But i had already installed it.
  • I then decided to try the IRC chat and pasted the error that I received and asked for some help.
  • Philip Vitorino offered to help me and explained to me that I was just missing a package. I told him that I wasn't sure what package I was missing. I told him the packages that I had installed and he gave me a package to install.
  • I installed libxt-dev
sudo apt -get install g++ libxt-dev
  • Rebuilded Firefox and left it running over night.
  • Next morning everything had gone smoothly, I ran Firefox in the terminal and got the browser running. 
/dist/bin ./firefox

Problems Encountered

During my


Screenshot

Coming soon!

Resources

Here are some links that I found useful and helped me in the process of building Mozilla Firefox:

Also got some help from people in the IRC Chat in room #Seneca. The name of these individuals are as follows:

  • Mike Lau (mylau) [Helped with building Firefox on Ubuntu system]
  • Philip Vitorino (philly) [Helped with building Firefox on Ubuntu system]
  • Dave Humphrey (dave) [Helped with building Firefox on Windows XP Professional system]
  • Tom Aratyn(mystic) [Helped with building Firefox on Windows XP Professional system]

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me with the problems I faced when building Firefox.

Conclusion

Info

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