Mobile/Build/Fennec

Building Fennec and XULRunner

If you want to cross-compile Fennec and XULRunner for ARM devices, you should first set up scratchbox.

Pulling the code from hg

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central
cd mozilla-central
hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/mobile-browser mobile

Creating a mozconfig

Here's an example mozconfig for building in scratchbox. The LDFLAGS, with-arm-kuser, and disable-tests options should be removed if you're building outside of scratchbox (for x86).

# cs2007q3 gcc 4.2 is busted, we think, and doesn't
# look in the expected places. --dougt.
# $PWD/... was added due to bug 463076
export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath-link,$PWD/dist/bin/:/usr/lib:/lib"

# Options for client.mk.
mk_add_options MOZ_BUILD_PROJECTS="xulrunner mobile"
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/../mobilebase

# Global options
#ac_add_options --enable-debug
#ac_add_options --disable-optimize

# XULRunner options
ac_add_app_options xulrunner --enable-application=xulrunner
ac_add_app_options xulrunner --disable-javaxpcom

# Enabling --with-arm-kuser implies Linux on ARM and enables kernel
# optimizations for that platform
ac_add_app_options xulrunner --with-arm-kuser

# Disabling tests due to bug 454881
ac_add_options --disable-tests

# mobile options
ac_add_app_options mobile --enable-application=mobile
ac_add_app_options mobile --with-libxul-sdk=../xulrunner/dist

libIDL

libIDL is required.

• I think the latest scratchbox instructions include a step to obtain libIDL, so building it yourself shouldn't be necessary. If that's wrong, there are instructions for building libIDL in scratchbox here. If you follow those steps you must also set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable. GavinSharp

Start the build

make -f client.mk build

Running Fennec on Maemo

If you did the above in a Maemo Scratchbox for the CHINOOK_ARMEL target, you can run the build on the N800/N810 device.

Create a Fennec tarball:

cd ../mobilebase/mobile/
make package

You'll now have a tarball in mobilebase/mobile/dist/ named fennec-0.3.en-US.linux-arm.tar.bz2. Copy it to your device (you'll probably want to run bunzip2 on it first, since Maemo doesn't include it).

Extract and launch from a command line (X Terminal) on the device:

$ tar xf fennec-0.3.en-US.linux-arm.tar 
$ cd fennec
$ ./fennec

Building Fennec with the Gecko SDK

Download SDK

First download the appropriate Gecko SDK from ftp.mozilla.org

Get the source

Follow the steps from #Pulling the code from hg

Creating a mozconfig

# Options for client.mk.
mk_add_options MOZ_BUILD_PROJECTS="xulrunner mobile"
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/../mobilebase

ac_add_options  --enable-application=mobile
ac_add_options  --with-libxul-sdk=<path to the SDK you downloaded and extracted>

Note: if you are building for x86 ubuntu, you might want to add "ac_add_options --disable-dbus" to your mozconfig, or obtain the necessary dbus libraries.

Build

make -f client.mk build

Note: At this point, you should be able to run and/or debug fennec, as your downloaded Gecko SDK is properly found by your app. However, since you're not using a xulrunner objdir, some package-related features (e.g. xptlinking) will not work unless you *package* or *install* your SDK. To turn them on, add the following line to your mozconfig ...

ac_add_options  --with-system-libxul

... And install your SDK as described in the following section :

Install libxul SDK

If you're not building a xulrunner objdir, but are rather using a downloaded Gecko SDK, you'll want to *install* your SDK prior to hacking fennec (especially if you intend to do 'performance' stuff) because some build features are only triggered are package-time. The easiest way to achieve this is throught system installation of your downloaded Gecko SDK :

make -f client.mk install

Building Win32

Start by setting up your system with the needed SDKs. This means Visual Studio 2008 and the Vista SDK. You can install the Windows Mobile 6 SDK also, but it's not needed for the Win32-only build.

Check out the hg repo listed above. Create a .mozconfig file in the mozilla-central directory. This looks similar to the above, but with some ARM/Linux specific lines removed:

# Options for client.mk.
mk_add_options MOZ_BUILD_PROJECTS="xulrunner mobile"
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/../mobilebase

# XULRunner options
ac_add_app_options xulrunner --enable-application=xulrunner
ac_add_app_options xulrunner --disable-javaxpcom

# mobile options
ac_add_app_options mobile --enable-application=mobile
ac_add_app_options mobile --with-libxul-sdk=../xulrunner/dist

# Global options -- uncomment these lines for debug version
#ac_add_options --enable-debug
#ac_add_options --disable-optimize

# needed to fix problem with Vista SDK
ac_add_options --disable-accessibility

Then use the commands

configure
make -f client.mk build

Don't panic if configure fails; the make will rerun it with the right options to allow this to work.