[SOLVED] Compiling Firefox 4

Snark1994 · 03-12-2011, 02:50 PM

Right... My goal, as the thread title states, is to compile Firefox 4 (I'm running Slackware). However, I've run into a couple of problems. I downloaded the source from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or...source.tar.bz2, and untarred it. It then turned out that compiling Firefox is more complicated than I expected, so following https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Dev...d_Instructions as closely as possible, I created the following .mozconfig file (taken from the same tutorial, and adding the 'webm' option to remove the need to install YASM:

Code:

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/ff-opt
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-webm

I run 'make -f client.mk' and get:

Code:

checking for GL/glx.h... no
configure: error: Can't find header GL/glx.h for WebGL (install mesa-common-dev (Ubuntu), mesa-libGL-devel (Fedora), or Mesa (SuSE))
*** Fix above errors and then restart with               "make -f client.mk build"
make[1]: *** [configure] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/mozilla-central'
make: *** [/usr/local/src/mozilla-central/ff-opt/Makefile] Error 2

At this point, I should point out that '/usr/include/GL/glx.h' exists. So I suspect one solution would be to persuade firefox to find this, but I haven't found any options that would allow me to do this ("--includedir=/usr/include" doesn't work). I also couldn't find any mention of Mesa in the firefox dependencies, but nor could I find an option to disable WebGL (my suspected solution number 2).

I then tried to install Mesa... However, I use the nvidia driver, which it doesn't seem to support. I do seem to have some sort of Nvidia equivalent (I don't know exactly what) because if I run glxinfo I get:

Code:

name of display: :0.0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions:
    ... stuff ...
client glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
    ... stuff ...
GLX version: 1.4
GLX extensions:
    ... stuff ...
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 9800 GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 260.19.36
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
OpenGL extensions:
    ... stuff ...

So... I suspect there are two solutions:
(1) Persuade firefox that yes, a satisfactory OpenGL thingy exists on my system
(2) Disable WebGL support.

However, if you have better ideas, fire away

any hints would be appreciated

Thanks,

andrewthomas · 03-12-2011, 03:38 PM

Is there a compelling reason that you want to compile from source as opposed to using official binaries like most distributions ( including slackware ) do?

Snark1994 · 03-12-2011, 04:15 PM

No, not really... I just prefer to compile rather than use a .tgz or .txz (or whatever the extension is), and have always been mildly wary of converting from .rpm or .deb, though I have heard that it can be done

What was your recommendation, exactly? To use something like alien?

EDIT: Thinking about it, .tgz/.txz isn't really any different to a .deb or .rpm, really... I just instinctively felt that you should be more cautious about them :L I'll give it a go, then report back

andrewthomas · 03-12-2011, 04:18 PM

Use a slackbuild.

Take this slackbuild

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/...fox.SlackBuild
http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/...fox.SlackBuild
and alter it to work with the 4.0-rc

OOPS: I think that I posted the wrong link, they are now correct

Snark1994 · 03-12-2011, 04:58 PM

Hm... Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I can't seem to adapt it to work with 4.0-rc

I removed all the lines which applied patches, and ran the script. It seemed to finish successfully, but when I run it, it pops up firefox 3.6.3 (both by appearance and in Help > About)

Code:

[joshua@joshua-desktop:/tmp]$ whereis firefox                     (12-03 22:55)
firefox: /usr/bin/firefox /usr/lib/firefox /usr/X11R6/bin/firefox /usr/bin/X11/firefox /usr/X11/bin/firefox
[joshua@joshua-desktop:/tmp]$ ls -l /usr/bin/firefox              (12-03 22:55)
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 2011-03-12 22:54 /usr/bin/firefox -> /usr/lib/firefox-4.0rc1/firefox
[joshua@joshua-desktop:/tmp]$ /usr/lib/firefox-4.0rc1/firefox -v  (12-03 22:56)
Mozilla Firefox 4.0
[joshua@joshua-desktop:/tmp]$ /usr/lib/firefox-4.0rc1/firefox     (12-03 22:56)
[joshua@joshua-desktop:/tmp]$                                     (12-03 22:56)

Any suggestions as to why it might be playing silly ******* with me?

andrewthomas · 03-12-2011, 05:28 PM

You need to install with upgradepkg

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/...rc1-i486-1.txz

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/...1-x86_64-1.txz

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-13-2011, 03:48 AM

Why don't you want to install yasm ? It's a very good assembler. Speeds up a lot of stuff.

Snark1994 · 03-13-2011, 09:11 AM

Thanks Andrew, that fixed it. I'm still getting used to how slackware manages things...

@H_TeXMeX_H : Mostly, because it was effort to install - I just wanted to get FF working, and I didn't see that I particularly needed YASM for other purposes