Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Discussion about Seamonkey builds
Zosimos
Posts: 170
Joined: April 23rd, 2004, 12:12 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by Zosimos »

As a learning Linux user I am seriously thinking of moving up to 64-bit computing. But one thing not available in any given distro that I know of is the default binary of Seamonkey. (Instead they usually include Firefox.) Are there any plans to start producing a default 64-bit binary package for either Linux or Windows in the near future? Is it possible to run a 32-bit Linux program in a 64-bit Linux without some sort of special measures? Windows 7 at least has a "compatibility mode" if you buy the "Professional" version.
User avatar
smsmith
Moderator
Posts: 19979
Joined: December 7th, 2004, 8:51 pm
Location: Indiana

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by smsmith »

openSUSE provides a 64-bit build of SeaMonkey in its standard repositories. But, you should be able to run a 32-bit program in a 64-bit environment. You just can't go the other way around.

If you choose to go the 64-bit route with your browser, you also need to use 64-bit plugins for the browser, which used to be a problem for Flash, but doesn't seem so anymore. Just another thing to keep in mind.

There are nightly 64-bit builds of SeaMonkey available for Linux, for instance:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ ... ral-trunk/
Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.
I like poetry, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick.
Please do not PM me for personal support. Keep posts here in the Forums instead and we all learn.
User avatar
James
Moderator
Posts: 27999
Joined: June 18th, 2003, 3:07 pm
Location: Made in Canada

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by James »

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/latest-comm-aurora/

Aurora is more stable if one is not used to test builds.

Even Firefox has yet to have official 64-bit builds for Windows.

Actually there was 64-bit Linux builds for SeaMonkey 2.3.3 and being it was the last RC build it should be equivalent to release although 64-bit builds on Linux and Windows are not official yet.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/nightly/2.3.3-candidates/build1/linux-x86_64/en-US/
User avatar
rolfp
Posts: 138
Joined: November 8th, 2009, 10:51 am

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by rolfp »

I'm using Mandriva Linux x86_64, an rpm-base distribution. I've been running 64-bit Seamonkey without extraordinary grief, 64-bit flash plugin from Adobe, 64-bit java plugin from the jre-1.7.0-fcs package from, who owns that, now, Oracle? idk, bit of shifting sands, there. Mandriva and the community have multimedia plugins like mplayer for quicktime, windows media, RealPlayer.

There is MIB, a community group making backports of rpms, including a 64-bit rpm for Seamonkey-2.3.3. A few months ago or so, the Seamonkey developer guy announced their build system was set up to generate 64-bit Linux builds right along with the 32-bit. Up to then, it took a while after the official release for a 64-bit version to get built and put up. Now, you can get it right at release time: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/#contrib It is "unofficial" but it just works. :)

The MIB rpm build lags behind, a bit, and I've just been getting the tarball from mozilla.org, unpacking it in my /home directory, and, as root, making a symlink in /usr/bin to the seamonkey executable in my /home directory, so it works easily with the menu and other programs that look for that sort of thing in /usr/bin.
User avatar
Psychonaut
Posts: 109
Joined: April 7th, 2008, 3:56 am
Location: Winnipeg
Contact:

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by Psychonaut »

Official 64-bit builds are the subject of two bug reports:
Bug 691752 - Provide 64-bit GNU/Linux binaries
Bug 482143 - Provide 64-bit Windows distribution

If you feel these issues are important, feel free to go vote for them, or volunteer your time or money to the SeaMonkey project so that they can build and test 64-bit builds. From the comments, it seems that they currently lack the hardware to do the building and testing; I'm not sure if this is a funding issue or just that nobody with access to the official development environment has had time to purchase and install new hardware.
rsx11m
Moderator
Posts: 14404
Joined: May 3rd, 2007, 7:40 am
Location: US

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by rsx11m »

Linux and Mac OSX are well covered as far as 64-bit binaries are concerned. The only thing remaining for official Mozilla x86_64 Linux builds is to move them from the "contrib" to the actual release directories in the ftp-server hierarchy, and to provide them on the main SeaMonkey web site if a 64-bit Linux flavor is detected based on the user-agent string. That apparently depends on hardware to run the builds and tests on a regular basis, though building doesn't seem to be the problem, tinderboxes are missing for the testing part.

Running the 32-bit binaries on a 64-bit distro is no problem as long as you also have the 32-bit run-time libraries installed. Make an "ldd seamonkey-bin" to see which libraries are missing (ignore libxul.so, libxpcom.so, libmozalloc.so, they are loaded from the seamonkey installation itself at runtime).

OpenSUSE's RPMs for the most recent releases are available from their download site (which you can add as repository in YaST), http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/mozilla/.
rsx11m
Moderator
Posts: 14404
Joined: May 3rd, 2007, 7:40 am
Location: US

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by rsx11m »

Psychonaut wrote:From the comments, it seems that they currently lack the hardware to do the building and testing.
That's actually no quite accurate:
KaiRo wrote:Thankfully, help in terms of more build machines is on the way, they actually have been bought bot not installed yet.
Thus, it may be just a matter of time as far as the Linux builds are concerned.
User avatar
Philip Chee
Posts: 6475
Joined: March 1st, 2005, 3:03 pm
Contact:

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by Philip Chee »

rsx11m wrote:
Psychonaut wrote:From the comments, it seems that they currently lack the hardware to do the building and testing.
That's actually no quite accurate:
KaiRo wrote:Thankfully, help in terms of more build machines is on the way, they actually have been bought bot not installed yet.
Thus, it may be just a matter of time as far as the Linux builds are concerned.

The machines are still in their packing boxes sitting in a corner of someone's office in Mountain View. Unfortunately ServerOps is too busy fighting fires to install our machines in a rack somewhere. Understandably Firefox problems take priority.

Phil
epp
Posts: 35
Joined: October 23rd, 2011, 7:38 am
Location: U.S.A.

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by epp »

I was never able to get the 32-bit version of SeaMonkey to run on 64-bit Linux. IIRC, when I tried to run via console window, it indicated it was looking for a file that was not there, however, inside the directory in question, the file it was looking for, was indeed there. This was before I discovered the 64-bit contributed builds, which I have used since then (almost 2 years now) and never had a problem with them.
rsx11m
Moderator
Posts: 14404
Joined: May 3rd, 2007, 7:40 am
Location: US

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by rsx11m »

On Linux, you'll need the 32-bit run-time libraries to get the official Mozilla builds to work (i.e., you should have a separate 32-bit package in addition to the default 64-bit package for each library). With a 64-bit distribution, they are not necessarily part of the default installation.

As for making 64-bit builds official and setting up the new machines for them, ServerOps recently has hit yet another distraction; the server housing the SeaMonkey builds bots apparently died, thus currently no SeaMonkey builds whatsoever for any branch or platform (bug 695278). Hopefully will be fixed in time to get set up for the next channel rotation on November 8th.
epp
Posts: 35
Joined: October 23rd, 2011, 7:38 am
Location: U.S.A.

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by epp »

I simply extracted the 64-bit tarball into the directory (I originally installed and continue use it at the user-level, not system-wide.) and it runs perfectly. This is with Debian (what I use now) and previously with Ubuntu.

I'm very happy with it. :)
rsx11m
Moderator
Posts: 14404
Joined: May 3rd, 2007, 7:40 am
Location: US

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by rsx11m »

Yes, the "contrib" 64-bit builds are working fine, they are just not "official" (yet). 8-) I was adding the comment on the 32-bit library issue for anybody running into it when trying to use the 32-bit builds (or any other 32-bit application for that matter) on their Linux system.
epp
Posts: 35
Joined: October 23rd, 2011, 7:38 am
Location: U.S.A.

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by epp »

rsx11m wrote:Yes, the "contrib" 64-bit builds are working fine, they are just not "official" (yet). 8-) I was adding the comment on the 32-bit library issue for anybody running into it when trying to use the 32-bit builds (or any other 32-bit application for that matter) on their Linux system.


When I first bought a 64-bit computer two years ago and installed Linux (I used Ubuntu at the time.), I tried to install the 32-bit version of SeaMonkey and found that it would not run. I then ran it from a console window to see what was going on with it and it referenced a certain file in the /seamonkey directory as "file not found", even though the file in question was present in the directory.

This was before I learned that there was a 64-bit contributed build available. I downloaded and installed that and have been using them ever since. :D
Debian unstable
LordOfTheBored
Posts: 307
Joined: December 7th, 2005, 8:36 pm

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by LordOfTheBored »

Zosimos wrote:Is it possible to run a 32-bit Linux program in a 64-bit Linux without some sort of special measures? Windows 7 at least has a "compatibility mode" if you buy the "Professional" version.

I'd just like to take a moment to amend the Windows situation presented. All versions of Win7 64-bit can run 32-bit code.

"Compatibility mode" is on 32- AND 64-bit versions of Win7 Pro+. It's little more than an emulator running Windows XP, and certainly an effective way to deal with incompatibilities between versions, but it's not for 32- vs 64-bit issues.
Ed_P
Posts: 108
Joined: February 16th, 2009, 2:29 pm

Re: Will there be a default 64-bit build soon?

Post by Ed_P »

LordOfTheBored wrote:I'd just like to take a moment to amend the Windows situation presented. All versions of Win7 64-bit can run 32-bit code.

Not all 32-bit code. I had to add several OCX files to my build to run one app and have another that won't run at all though it runs on Win 7 32-bit fine.

LordOfTheBored wrote:"Compatibility mode" is on 32- AND 64-bit versions of Win7 Pro+. It's little more than an emulator running Windows XP, and certainly an effective way to deal with incompatibilities between versions, but it's not for 32- vs 64-bit issues.

Just to be clear there is an XP VM option with the Pro+ versions but all versions of Win 7 offer "Compatibility mode" from Vista SP2 to Win 95.
Ed
Locked