I have been able, mainly from reading , to successfully get mozilla to compile, and run. The following should be simplified steps as to how to get mozilla running (from current source) on your FreeBSD system. I should remind you however, that at the time of this article, Mozilla is not even considered beta. They are still implementing features, ripping out old portions of code, and installing new ones. On my system mozilla ran awfully slow, and wasn't complete as far as features. Once they get closer, we should see one heck of a powerful browser.

Step 1: Requirements

The following requirements are listed as far as what's on mozilla's site, and what I successfully compiled with.

  Product				mozilla.org		My System
  egcs 1.0.3 or gcc 2.7.2.x		-----------		egcs 2.91.66
  Perl 5				-----------		---------
  GNU make				3.74			3.77 (see below)
  autoconf				2.12			2.13
  GNU m4				-----------		---------
  cvs					1.9			1.9
  glib					1.2			1.2.1 (see below)
  gtk					1.2			1.2.1
  libIDL				0.6.3			0.6.3
  motif or lesstif			-----------		---------
  

On their site, they listed a problem with using GNU make 3.77, that it breaks NSPR. I had no such problems, maybe they fixed that?

Compile glib 1.2.1 from ports, but on the line in the Makefile file that reads "CONFIGURE_ARGS =", add "--with-threads=none".

Gtk compilation requires glib, so compile glib from the ports before compiling gtk.

libIDL can be obtained from

I am not sure if motif/lesstif are required, they are not listed on the site, but an older source of mozilla (including the FreeBSD port) required it.

Here is a rundown of my system:

	Pentium 166MMX
	96 Megabytes RAM
	13 Gigabyte IDE Hard Drive (220 Megs Swap)
	FreeBSD 3.1-STABLE (Fri Apr  9 17:16:18)
  

Their requirements are:

	32 Megabytes of RAM
	128 Megabytes of Swap Space
  

The source, including object files is 355 Megabytes. NSPR (part of mozilla, but treated separately) is 27 kilobytes.

Step 2: Retrieve and Build the NSPR libraries

I use /usr/src/mozilla to hold my sources (and binaries) for mozilla. Since mozilla is a work in progress, and far from done at this point, I wouldn't advise actually installing it, but rather to compile it, run it from the source directory, and see whats up in the mozilla world.

  A. cd /usr/src
  B. export CVSROOT=:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot
     (I use the korn shell, which uses the 'export' command, check your
	shell's documentation to see if it supports export for setting
	the environment.  Some shells use the 'setenv' command.)
  C. cvs login
     (the login is anonymous; This step is only necessary once, for the
	password is saved in your home directory - ~/.cvspass)
  D. cvs co NSPR 
     (This will download the NSPR libraries into /usr/src/mozilla/nsprpub.
	Do not create mozilla in /usr/src; cvs will do so for you.)
  D. cd /usr/src/mozilla/nsprpub
  E. gmake DIST=/usr/local/nspr
  F. ldconfig -elf -m /usr/local/nspr/lib
     (This allows the library manager to see the nspr libraries)
  

Step 3: Download and compile Mozilla

  A. cd /usr/src
  B. export GTK_CONFIG=/usr/X11R6/bin/gtk12-config
  C. export GLIB_CONFIG=/usr/local/bin/glib12-config
  D. export LIBIDL_CONFIG=/usr/local/bin/libIDL-config
     (Again, with the export command, it could differ based upon your shell)
  E. cvs co SeaMonkeyEditor
     (This downloads Mozilla's source)
  F. cd /usr/src/mozilla
  G. configure --with-nspr=/usr/local/nspr --enable-debug --cache-file=/dev/null
     --with-pthreads=no
  H. gmake depend
  I. gmake export
  J. ldconfig -elf -m /usr/src/mozilla/dist/bin /usr/src/mozilla/dist/lib
  K. export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/src/mozilla/dist/bin
     (Again, with the export command, it could differ based upon your shell)
  L. cd /usr/src/mozilla/dist/bin
  K. ./apprunner
  

Wallah, given that you're in X, after a short time of setting up configuration files, running various sections of mozilla and other necessary time, mozilla should pop up your screen. It took about 2 minutes for the whole thing to finish loading.

Unfortunately, I didn't time the whole process, but it took approximately an hour and a half to two hours. Certain things, such as locks on the source while downloading via CVS, how fast your connection is, and how fast your system is will affect downloading time, compile time and loading time.

Michael Vioreanu
<>

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