firefox

Build Firefox with patches and a custom pdf.js version for Linux and macOS.

Prebuilt releases can be found here.

Configuration

• Set TARGET to macos or linux.
• TARGET_TRIPLE= variable controls the target architecture.
• Place patches under ./patches before starting the build.

To build for one platform:

make TARGET=... build

To reapply patches, use make unpatch and then rebuild.

The Linux build is done on Ubuntu LTS, the output should also work somewhat on Arch Linux. Check out the Arch Linux packaging repository to see if there are any special hacks needed.

Setup for macOS

The macOS target can only be built from a macOS host. The default configuration in the repository compiles for arm64. You need at least 64 GB of disk. Setup from a fresh install:

1. Setup Xcode, can be downloaded from here (Apple ID required)

xcode-select --install

(cd /Applications && xip --expand ~/Downloads/Xcode_*.xip)

sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app
sudo xcodebuild -license

2. Install build dependencies

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew bundle install --file conf/Brewfile
./scripts/rustup.sh

Tips

Firefox

To reuse the same profile after downgrading Firefox, delete ~/.mozilla/firefox/$PROFILE/compatibility.ini.

console.log() output from internal Javascript in Firefox should be visible by default on stdout, ./mach run is not doing any extra magic for this to happen, it is part of the binary itself. To run with additional Javascript logging use MOZ_LOG=console:5.

Useful commands for the ./mach build:

# Possible arguments for ac_add_options
./configure --help

# Build compile_commands.json:
./mach build-backend --backend=CompileDB

# Run with custom profile:
./mach run -n -- --profile ./.my_profile

pdf.js

The builtin pdf.js viewer in Firefox can also be patched from a finished build, you do not need to build from source. NB This can break other extensions in unexpected ways, e.g. the autocompletion for the Vimium omnibar.

# Build pdf.js for Firefox
npx gulp mozcentral

# Patch the omni.ja of your existing installation with your build output
(cd build/mozcentral/browser &&
    ln -fns extensions chrome &&
    zip "/usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja" 'chrome/*')