[FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel)

Discussion of third-party/unofficial Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey builds.
MacTed
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by MacTed »

and... another 2 week gap, and Mozilla has pushed 4.0RC1 and 3.6.15final ... which don't feel to me like they match the furbism Intel-optimized builds.

how can we help keep things working?
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elfurbe
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by elfurbe »

Sorry guys. My G5 threw a hard drive, but I finally got it rebuilt today. I had to do a full reinstall, so I'm running a test run of nightlies right now, hopefully you'll see them start trickling up as they finish. When those finish, I'll run 4RC1s and latest 3s and then get the cron job back in place and hopefully get back on track.

Sorry for the inconvenience! On the other hand, it's good to know people still use them. :D
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elfurbe
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by elfurbe »

Welp, there was a 4.0 release tag in Mercurial, so I built that instead. Check 'em out!
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by phiw13 »

elfurbe, does your Fx4/Intel build work with OS X 10.4 ?
(trying to help a friend who is stuck with that combo - it is only intended to be used for website testing / webcompat). Tia.
Islandgirl45
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by Islandgirl45 »

I also have an Intel iMac running 10.4.11, which was supplied by an employer. Firefox has always been my primary browser and I've been searching for a stable Firefox 4 build for Tiger on Intel.
MacTed
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by MacTed »

It seems like something in the builds choked again...

I'm hoping to get an Intel-optimized build of 3.6.16, to match the current mainstream version ... because, well, FF4 doesn't make me happy yet.

The current worst thing about it is it seems to be unable to use all my saved authentication credentials -- even though they all show up when I go looking for them! -- and honestly, that's preventing me from using it enough to evaluate the rest of the not-so-pretty-to-me new UI.
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elfurbe
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by elfurbe »

No 10.4 support, except G3 3.x builds. As I recall, you can't build Firefox 4 against the 10.4u SDK, it requires 10.5, which is why I don't/can't build Firefox 4 for G3.

They didn't choke, I just haven't reenabled cron. I was waiting on replies to see if they're working, as I had to recreate my build env from scratch.
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by darm1k »

Here's a build of Firefox 4 for OS X 10.4 ppc.

http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
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elfurbe
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by elfurbe »

Nice find. I wonder how their custom code compares to my FX4 builds on the PPC machines I can still support? Might be time to hang up my hat if some dudes are actually writing code to make 4 run AND perform better on PPC...
ClassicHasClass
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by ClassicHasClass »

Hi, TenFourFox maintainer here (someone pointed me to this thread; I'm usually just an occasional lurker).

The primary difference w/r/t performance in TenFourFox is that it has a working PowerPC nanojit -- I took the partially completed one in Fx3.6 and finished it, and then added some shim stuff to the tracer to keep it stable and for the G5's different performance characteristics. The G5 version also has some compiler juicing that's a little different than yours for stability purposes (essentially 32-bit 7450 tuned for G5 pipelines). Otherwise, it uses the same gcc settings as you do, although I'm looking into -ftree-optimize for a future release once I'm satisfied it won't make the app buggy. I am also looking into AltiVec acceleration for certain components, starting with WebM, which suffers somewhat and only works well on G5. There is also an internal update infrastructure so that people continue to receive security updates as they would normally from Mozilla, just in this case from the TenFourFox builds.

However, my itch to scratch is the union of 10.4 and PPC, which is where I sit personally at this G5. I still need Classic, I can't abide x86 (a long-standing, almost bigoted disgust at the ISA), and I think the Mac as we know it will start its decline with 10.7, so I want a browser that I can use. I just happen to have the technical knowledge and the barren social life to be able to pull that off, and I'm lucky to have had people help me in that endeavour. However, this is not without its cost: I have chosen compromises to make that possible and reliable, such as shutting down hardware accelerated graphics completely and disabling WebGL, since 10.4 PPC does not support OpenGL 2, so while being compatible with Firefox is a design goal and it almost completely succeeds, TenFourFox is not Firefox.

Your builds, on the other hand, are true Firefox. Yours (probably? never tried, don't have 10.5) likely do support OpenGL and WebGL on those Power Macs that have the graphics cojones for it. Yours has the pure-C++ SpiderMonkey, which while slower than TenFourFox, is also well-developed and stable, and you don't have to contend with the widget kludges I do to make code intended for 10.5 work with 10.4.

For that reason alone, I personally would be very sad to see no more El Furbe builds for PPC. Not only is it good for the Power community to have choices, but you are offering a stock build which has its own unique advantages and isn't merely a vanilla lowest common denominator. You also have a lot of trust from the community for your hard work; I've even used your builds myself. So please continue! I'm glad you find TenFourFox fascinating and I certainly wouldn't mind some cross-pollination, but I think having a solid straight-from-source "true Firefox" build for PowerPC is valuable.
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elfurbe
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by elfurbe »

Well hey. So let it be written. PPC builds to continue at furbism for the foreseeable future. Bearing in mind that when/if Mozilla axes PPC support entirely, I will be off the air with regards to that. Consider yourselves informed.

I'm running one more manual "nightly" set, and then I'll bring back the cron and we'll be back on track. I took this opportunity to make some changes to the build process which will hopefully fix a few trifling errors I had. It will probably break things. :D If it doesn't, then automagic builds will be back tomorrow.
MacTed
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by MacTed »

Awesomesauce.

Thanks, elfurbe!
Islandgirl45
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by Islandgirl45 »

Hi elfurbe,

Is this the latest Intel build for Firefox 3.6? FXIntel-3.6.17pre-2011.03.31.dmg

I installed that after my regular FF 3.6.16 turned kind of wonky, but wanted to make sure I had the most current one.
MacTed
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by MacTed »

I hate to keep being a noodge... and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed ... but the builds have all stalled again, 3+ weeks ago. :-/
VonMagnum
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Re: [FX] elfurbe: Nightly [Branch|Trunk/OSX] (G3/G4/G5/Intel

Post by VonMagnum »

So I'm to understand that the TenFourFox build is faster for Javascript (updated JIT engine), but the elfurbe builds are much faster for PPC machines that have a decent graphics card and running 10.5.8? I've got a 1.8GHz 7448 G4 and ATI Radeon 9800Pro running 10.5.8. It sounds like the elfurbe build is going to be far better for my system overall? Graphics/User interface speed is more important to me than Javascript rendering time. It would be nice to see the JIT engine added into the elfurbe builds, though.

Thanks to both of you for keeping PPC alive. Most developers act like there are no PPC machines out there. My 1.8GHz machine is quite capable still and runs my whole house audio/video system (I have a 2008 MBP as well, but I use it for other things like music production. Since the server is on all the time, I tend to web browse on it the most).

Edit:

I've tested the latest of both TenFour and Elburbe and Javascript seems to be about 2x faster on TenFour. I'm not sure what to test for hardware acceleration in a browser, so I'm still not sure which version to run since I'd like the browser to be as fast as possible.

Testing WebGL, I get "Your browser does not support WebGL" in both Minefield and Safari. So I guess I don't are about that either way and seeing I never knew I was missing it in the first place, all the more so.

Ok, testing for hardware acceleration, there is NONE (about: support) and from what I just read, you have to be running 10.6.3 minimum to get ANY hardware acceleration on a Mac, so those arguments appear to be moot at this point. I don't know about Spidermonkey stability or stability in general, though.
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