Francis Robichaud

Here are some pretty straight forward steps to quickly get a development environment based on the Eclipse IDE. The tools in this environment are

• Eclipse with the Eclipse-CDT platform
• Distcc – a distributed C/C++ compiler
• Mozilla Framework – the base framework used for Mozilla projects

Note: Mozilla has great documentation to help building any of their application. Please have a look there before posting any question. The #developers irc.mozilla.org channel is also a good start.

This tutorial assumes you’re using Ubuntu or a similar distro.

Build and configure Firefox

1. Install required tools and Firefox dependencies

sudo apt-get install cvs distcc eclipse eclipse-cdt libcurl4-openssl-dev distccmon-gnome
sudo apt-get build-dep firefox

2. Get the Firefox source

TAR :

wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b5/source/firefox-3.0b5-source.tar.bz2
tar -xjf firefox-3.0b5-source.tar

CVS :

export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
cvs login
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot co mozilla/client.mk
cd mozilla
make -f client.mk checkout

Note: Mozilla MXR offers a quick web search engine for source code

3. Create the Mozilla config file to build firefox

cd mozilla
echo “mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/../obj-@CONFIG_GUESS@” >> .mozconfig
echo “ac_add_options –enable-application=browser” >> .mozconfig
echo “mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser” >> .mozconfig
echo “ac_add_options –enable-debug” >> .mozconfig
echo “ac_add_options –disable-optimize” >> .mozconfig
echo “mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS=\”CC=’distcc gcc’ CXX=’distcc g++’ -j4\”" >> .mozconfig

Note: Add the last line only if you plan to use distcc. Also, replace the ‘j4′ parameter by the number of available processors (or cores) +2. Ex: if you have a total of 4 cores connected to your distcc server, use j6.

Install and configure distcc

1. Edit /etc/default/distcc

STARTDISTCC=”true”
ALLOWEDNETS=”10.145.0.0/16″
LISTENER=”0.0.0.0″

2. Add distcc hosts

mkdir ~/.distcc
echo “localhost build-machine” > ~/distcc/hosts
chmod 666 ~/.distcc/hosts

3. Restart the service

sudo /etc/init.d/distcc restart

Build Firefox

make -f client.mk build

Configure the Eclipse project

1. Create the project

File->New->Project…
C/C++ Project->Standard Make C++ Project
Project Name: Firefox
Location : (select the extracted mozilla folder)
Click “Finish”

2. Configure the project

Right-click on the new Firefox project in Eclipse’s left column
Click “Properties”
Select “Make C++ Project”
Change “Build command” to “make -f client.mk”
Change “Build (incremental build)” from “all” to “build”

3.  Build Firefox from Eclipse

You should remove the “Build automatically” option from the Project menu and build the application by right-clicking on the Firefox project and selecting “Build Project”
If you do not see the “Build Project” option, make sure you are using the C/C++ perspective.
This operation always takes a while since all subfolders and files need to be parsed (around 30k files)

Debugging Firefox

1. Create the Debug/Run configuration

Select Run->Debug… from the Eclipse menu
Right-click on C/C++ Local Application and select New
Project: firefox
C/C++ Application: (select browse and choose mozilla/../obj-i686-pc-linux-gnu/dist/bin/firefox-bin)

2. Add specific configuration

In the Arguments tab, change the working directory to mozilla/../obj-i686-pc-linux-gnu/dist/bin/

In the Environment tab, create two variables,

one with name LD_LIBRARY_PATH and value .:./plugins:.
one with name LIBRARY_PATH and value .:./components:.

In the Debugger tab, remove the checkbox on “Stop on startup at:”

3. Click Apply and hit Debug to start debugging Firefox. If you face any issue, you can try to switch the debugger from gdb/mi to gdb Debugger.

Now time to read Introduction to Mozilla Source Code. I might one day create a similar tutorial for a Visual Studio environment. Enjoy !