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Mozilla on BeOS - M8

Richard Hess <rhess@engr.sgi.com> Fri Jul 16, 1999

This is the M8 ALPHA release of Mozilla for the BeOS.

What's available

    This page documents three different options for people who are interested in helping the BeZilla project move forward;

    • Option 0: Testing the water...
    • Option 1: Hunting for bugs...
    • Option 2: Life on the cutting edge...

    Please read the entire page before you start downloading files. Each option contains a list of the files & utilities which you will need to have installed on your system in order to create a viable runtime or development enviroment for Mozilla for BeOS...

What's required

  • BeOS R4.5 for x86. There is no PowerPC port at this time.
  • At least 128MB of virtual memory
    If you have less than 64MB of phyisical RAM you should set your virtual memory settings to at least 128MB.

Automated builds

    Builds of Mozilla are being performed under BeOS daily, their main intent is for developers to know if their changes to the Mozilla source code are compatible with BeOS. You can check the status at the MozillaTest tinderbox page.
    We might provide selected builds from the automated build machine in the future.

Contacting team BeZilla

    Please contact us through the netscape.public.mozilla.beos newsgroup on news.mozilla.org (also available as a mailing list at mozilla-beos@mozilla.org).

    You might also find us lurking on #mozilla on irc.mozilla.org or #bedev on EFnet.

    If you have found a bug you can submit it through http://bugzilla.mozilla.org, please be sure to mark the bug as specific to the BeOS. Please follow the bugzilla guidelines when submitting bugs.

-- Team BeZilla...

Option 0: Testing the water...

If you are just interested in seeing see how things are progressing on the BeZilla project, then you might consider downloading the binary release and trying it out.

We don't consider Mozilla for BeOS to be fit for everyday browsing, yet. It's still very rough around the edges and in full development (both the BeOS layer and the cross platform Mozilla code).

You can still help us a lot by comparing this release of Mozilla with the equivalent Windows or Linux version, or better yet with both. If you find a bug, and confirm that it's not present in Mozilla M8 for Windows or Linux you will point us at a problem in the BeOS layer, which is what we're working on. On the other hand, if the problem exists on all platforms you should file a bug with Mozilla, and that will eventually also help Mozilla on BeOS (though it probably won't be us fixing it). Please note that if the bug is very apparent we probably know about it already.

What you'll need:

How to run Mozilla for BeOS:

To start mozilla, simply double click on the apprunner icon. If you start from a terminal you'll get some debugging messages.

If you experience a crash we'd like you to;

  1. enter the debugger (use the 'debugger' button, not the 'no symbols' button)
  2. wait while symbols are loaded
  3. issue an 'sc' command (just press 'sc'<enter>)
  4. copy the contents of the whole window with ALT-A
  5. paste it into a message for;
  6. if you have started Mozilla from a Terminal window the last few screen full of output will also help us.

Option 1: Hunting for bugs...

If you want to try to help in fixing bugs in the BeOS specific code or you don't have a good net connection to BeOS you might consider downloading a source tarball and setting up a nice and comfortable static environment.

What you'll need:

  • cvs
  • perl
  • mozilla src - a snapshot of the M8 code base... [ 19972 kb ]
  • glib & libIDL - a quick BeOS port... [ 837.8 kb ]
  • up to 1Gb disk space for the whole tree compiled with debugging

How to set up your environment (first time):

We'll assume you'll be working from /boot/home/mozilla and you have placed the downloaded archive in /boot/home. 

    cd /boot/home
unzip glib-libIDL-beos.zip
mv glib-libIDL-beos mozlibs
cd mozlibs
buildscript
export GLIB_CONFIG=/boot/home/mozlibs/glib/bin/glib-config
export LIBIDL_CONFIG=/boot/home/mozlibs/libIDL/bin/libIDL-config
cd /boot/home
mkdir mozilla
cd mozilla
gzip -c -d /boot/home/mozilla-src-1999.07.03.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
cd mozilla
configure --enable-cpp-exceptions \
          --enable-cpp-rtti \
          --enable-mailnews \
          --without-png \
          --without-zlib \
          --enable-debug \
          --disable-strip-libs
make

You'll now have a full debug build, the final binaries are under /boot/ home/mozilla/mozilla/dist/bin. You can generate a smaller binary (both in size and in compile time) by using this configure line instead: 

    configure --enable-cpp-exceptions \
          --enable-cpp-rtti \
          --enable-mailnews \
          --without-png \
          --without-zlib \
          --disable-debug \
          --enable-strip-libs

How to set up your environment (after the first time): 

    cd /boot/home/mozilla/mozilla
make

Option 2: Life on the cutting edge...

If you're willing to risk your sanity with the never ending changes to the tree you might want to try using the Mozilla cvs repository directly. You'll always have the latest sources, with all the benefits and all the drawbacks (i.e. the sources might not compile and the binary might not run).

What you'll need:

  • cvs
  • perl
  • glib & libIDL - a quick BeOS port... [ 837.8 kb ]
  • up to 1Gb disk space for the whole tree compiled with debugging
  • good net connection from BeOS to keep the sources in sync

How to set up your environment (first time):

We'll assume you'll be working from /boot/home/mozilla 

    cd /boot/home/mozilla
export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
cvs login (the password is 'anonymous')
cvs -z3 co SeaMonkeyAll

Now you have the full Mozilla sources, you have to first build the support libraries. Place them anywhere you like and run the 'buildscript' that comes with the package.

Now set the environment variables as instructed, for example: 

    export GLIB_CONFIG=/boot/home/mozlibs/glib/bin/glib-config
export LIBIDL_CONFIG=/boot/home/mozlibs/libIDL/bin/libIDL-config

Now let's configure and build: 

    cd /boot/home/mozilla/mozilla
configure --enable-cpp-exceptions \
          --enable-cpp-rtti \
          --enable-mailnews \
          --without-png \
          --without-zlib \
          --enable-debug \
          --disable-strip-libs
make

This will produce a full debugging build, the final binaries are under /boot/home/mozilla/mozilla/dist/bin. It's no longer necessary to build with full debugging to be able to produce inter-library dependencies, however you'll want debugging info if you want to try and trace through the code with bdb.

The resulting binaries won't be correctly linked. You have to do this to generate link dependencies and rebuild: 

    cd /boot/home/mozilla/mozilla
perl config/beos/depend.pl dist/bin/*.so dist/bin/components/*.so
touch -t 01010101 dist/bin/*.so dist/bin/components/*.so
make

How to set up your environment (after the first time): 

    cd /boot/home/mozilla
export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
cvs -z3 co SeaMonkeyAll
export GLIB_CONFIG=/boot/home/mozlibs/glib/bin/glib-config
export LIBIDL_CONFIG=/boot/home/mozlibs/libIDL/bin/libIDL-config
make

The resulting binaries might not be able to run if inter-library dependencies have changed (they're not required or updated on other platforms), you'll get a "missing symbol" error. In this case you'll have to repeat the dependency generation and rebuild: 

    cd /boot/home/mozilla/mozilla
perl config/beos/depend.pl dist/bin/*.so dist/bin/components/*.so
touch -t 01010101 dist/bin/*.so dist/bin/components/*.so
make