Where's Walden? » building

PSA: If you get an xpidllex.py failure building mozilla-central, rm $topsrcdir/xpcom/idl-parser/*.pyc (bug 723861) (eom)

Jeff — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:40:47 +0000

Seen during a recent compile of mozilla-central with Clang, offered without comment

Jeff — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:56:15 +0000

TestStartupCache.cpp
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:119:15: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* buf = "Market opportunities for BeardBook";
              ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:120:14: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* id = "id";
             ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:148:15: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* buf = "BeardBook competitive analysis";
              ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:149:14: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* id = "id";
             ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:197:14: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* id = "id";
             ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:288:15: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* buf = "Find your soul beardmate on BeardBook";
              ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:289:14: warning: conversion from string literal to 'char *' is deprecated [-Wdeprecated-writable-strings]
  char* id = "id";
             ^
/home/jwalden/moz/inttypes/startupcache/test/TestStartupCache.cpp:323:12: warning: unused variable 'rv2' [-Wunused-variable]
  nsresult rv2;
           ^
8 warnings generated.

Followup to recent .mozconfig detection changes: $topsrcdir/mozconfig and $topsrcdir/.mozconfig now both work

Jeff — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:00:34 +0000

Two weeks ago changes landed in Mozilla to reduce the locations searched for a mozconfig to just $MOZCONFIG and $topsrcdir/.mozconfig. Previously a bunch of other weird places were searched, like $topsrcdir/mozconfig.sh and $topsrcdir/myconfig.sh and even some files in $HOME (!). This change made specifying build options more explicit, in line with build system policy to be “as explicit as possible”. Reducing complexity by killing off a bunch of truly odd configuration option locations was good. But I thought it went too far.

The changes also removed $topsrcdir/mozconfig. This location wasn’t nearly as bizarre as the others, and it was more explicit than $topsrcdir/.mozconfig: it appeared in directory listings and folder views. I wasn’t the only person who thought $topsrcdir/mozconfig should stay: the bug which reduced the mozconfig guesswork included rumblings from others wanting to keep support for $topsrcdir/mozconfig, and the blog post announcing the change included yet more.

I filed a bug to re-support $topsrcdir/mozconfig, and the patch has landed. $topsrcdir/.mozconfig and $topsrcdir/mozconfig (either but not both) now work again: use whichever name you like.

My distro can beat up your distro’s honor student. Or something like that. (Or: setting up ccache-powered Firefox builds in Fedora)

Jeff — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:23:43 +0000

dholbert makes a recent post (well, recent only in planet.mozilla.org‘s little mind, no idea why a post from September 2008 is being displayed as new!) discussing how to build Firefox with ccache on Ubuntu, saving compilation time on close to null-program rebuilds. Cool beans. However:

If you’re on Fedora 11 (conceivably earlier too, I regretfully haven’t regularly used Fedora since Fedora 6, until recently), the basic developer tools package combo includes ccache, and caching Just Works in Firefox builds with no extra work needed at all.

[jwalden@the-great-waldo-search dbg]$ \
> ls -la `which g++` `which c++` `which gcc` /usr/bin/ccache
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 43584 2009-02-23 23:42 /usr/bin/ccache
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root    16 2009-10-02 21:29 /usr/lib64/ccache/c++ -> ../../bin/ccache
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root    16 2009-10-02 21:29 /usr/lib64/ccache/g++ -> ../../bin/ccache
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root    16 2009-10-02 21:29 /usr/lib64/ccache/gcc -> ../../bin/ccache
[jwalden@the-great-waldo-search dbg]$ du -hs ~/.ccache
883M	/home/jwalden/.ccache

Anyway, use whichever distro you want, with ccache or without, whatever satisfies your preferences and utility curve. (The semi-troll title is completely gratuitous, but my sense of humor mandated I use it. ) As for me: I am an absolute sucker for convenience. I’ve known of ccache for years and never used it before due to the activation energy needed to do so; had using ccache required equivalent effort in Fedora I strongly doubt I’d ever have used it. Score one for making the right choice for the user rather than requiring him to make it himself.