Firefox OS/TCP/Patching

Developing for the Tablet

The primary Firefox OS build documenation, including pre-requisites, set-up, building, flashing, and FAQs are all available at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Building_and_installing_Firefox_OS

This is meant to be a quick reference guide specific to the Tablet Contribution Program and the first tablet device which is named in the project as "flatfish".

Preparation

Your developing PC and target platform should have android-ready base before you start a b2g/firefox os build. The following instructions of this document are all verified on Ubuntu 12.04. For Mac OS, we are working in progress.

  1. AOSP environment

    http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java

  2. Firefox OS (B2G) environment

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/Firefox_OS_build_prerequisites

  3. Create an account in github

    https://github.com/

Download B2G and AOSP source codes of flatfish

  1. git clone b2g scripts and config files

    $git clone git://github.com/mozilla-b2g/B2G.git -b master b2g_flatfish

  2. configure flatfish and repo sync aosp and b2g source codes

    $cd b2g_flatfish

    $./config.sh flatfish

    You have to wait for a long while to download the source codes depending on the network bandwidth.

Start to build flatfish

  1. Connect flatfish device for extract necessary files at first build

    The first build will pull necessary files into backup-flatfish which is automatic created by extract-files.sh. You DO NOT need to connect flatfish device if backup-flatfish is created.

  2. How to build whole B2G

    For flatfish, we need some prefix to support tablet distribution and enable some functions. GAIA_DISTRIBUTION_DIR=distribution_tablet is used for supporting tablet distribution of gaia. B2G_SYSTEM_APPS=1 is for moving webapp from /data to /system, and B2G_UPDATER=1 is enable OTA.

    $GAIA_DISTRIBUTION_DIR=distribution_tablet B2G_SYSTEM_APPS=1 B2G_UPDATER=1 ./build.sh

    Building whole system might take a long time, you can take a rest or try to build gecko/gaia if you just modify gecko/gaia.

  3. How to build Gecko or Gaia only

    Gecko only

    $B2G_UPDATER=1 ./build.sh gecko

    Gaia only

    $GAIA_DISTRIBUTION_DIR=distribution_tablet B2G_SYSTEM_APPS=1 ./build.sh gaia

Flash the images you build

Please make sure adb can connect to your device successfully before flash images. You can do simple test to check adb connection, you will see something like “FLATFISH_123456 device” after typo “adb devices” if adb connection successfully.

  1. Flash whole images

    $./flash.sh

  2. Flash gecko only

    $./flash.sh gecko

  3. Flash gaia only

    $./flash.sh gaia

WIP bug list

Bug 961563 - [TABLET] Support specifying target device type in Gaia build script

Bug 965145 - [Camera] refactor .sensorAngle patch in bug 947956 for new camera app

Bug 983013 - Flatfish can't be build in OSX 10.9 (Mavericks)

FAQ

To be continue