Faster builds for Firefox front-end developers with make

There's a trend of blog posts about faster builds, so here's another one.

There is a trick that allows to skip most compilation from the tree, but it only works if the only changes you make are under browser/ (which should be the case for a lot of front-end development).

  • Get a xulrunner SDK nightly for your platform.
  • Unpack it with tar or unzip depending on the file you got.
  • Add the following to your mozconfig:
    ac_add_options --with-libxul-sdk=/path/to/the/unpacked/xulrunner-sdk
  • Build with your favorite command.
  • Enjoy finishing your clobber build under 30 seconds (20 seconds here, including a 10 seconds configure).

2013-08-08 09:54:32+0900

p.m.o

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2 Responses to “Faster builds for Firefox front-end developers with make”

  1. Neil Rashbrook Says:

    This mostly works for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey too although you also need to add ac_add_options –enable-incomplete-external-linkage (note that this option breaks from time to time, so ymmv).

  2. Na Me Says:

    Mike, how bout nother oh-not-so-quick but “New manually-made upstream release” of Iceape, ple-e-e-e-ase?!

    Thanks! #705889