[FX] PowerBook: 2005-07-16 [Trunk/OS X] (G4, O3, Altivec)

Discussion of third-party/unofficial Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey builds.
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krmathis
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Post by krmathis »

carboncopy. You're welcome!

Nice to get feedback from the users that they notice speed improvement with my builds, compared to the official ones. Less memory usage is a good thing as well.
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krmathis
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Post by krmathis »

Guys, am I the only one who experience lots of problems with unresponsive keyboard shortcut and context menus these days? 20-30 times a day, at least!
* Cut, Copy & Paste dont work.
* 'Open Link in New Tab' dont work.
* Pressing ' or / in a text box opens FAYT.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=299514
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220900

If any of you experience the same problem, please vote for the above bugs. [-o<
Thats basically our only hope to get them fixed.
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krmathis
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Post by krmathis »

Dear faithful Firefox G4 users. I have some bad news for you!

I leave Firefox and enter the Camino world.
Which mean there will be no nightly G4 optimized Firefox builds from now on..

But if anybody want to follow me to the "other side" you find my G4 optimized Camino builds here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=293318


Thanks a lot for the support and nice words the last 9 months! :D
LordBodak
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Post by LordBodak »

I'm very sorry to hear that b/c I don't like Camino at all and I love your builds. I guess I'll be back to using the official nightlies.

Also sorry to see that those bugs were the end for you. I have never once experienced them.

Thanks for the all the work you've put into this.
ahancock
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Post by ahancock »

wow. the end of an era.

So long then, and thanks for the builds!


edit: Mind posting your latest mozconfig for someone to use to take up your torch?
Last edited by ahancock on July 17th, 2005, 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jcraig
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Post by jcraig »

Thanks Powerbook. I don't know what I'm going to miss more, your excellent builds, or the awesome logo ;-)
There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it's all dark.
phiw13
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Post by phiw13 »

Kai,
I'm sad to see you leaving. Thanks a lot for those wonderfull builds.

Have fun, anyway... ;-)
drumsticks
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Post by drumsticks »

Sorry to hear that you are leaving the Firefox world to get into the Camino world. At least the worlds are related somehow. Good luck and have fun!
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elfurbe
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Post by elfurbe »

Good lord, why? I'm so confused by a move like that. There was a time when Camino was it for Mac, but Firefox is where it is now, as well as the one getting the official backing. Utter confusion from me.

I vote for continuing this thread until someone, whoever that may be can start a new dynasty. Having optimized builds of Firefox for G4 was of great value to me and my Powerbook (the Apple kind, not the guy responsible for this thread...:D) and I'm sure there are many more who will miss these builds. Powerbook, you have been a great source of information on getting my own custom builds going, and it's a serious loss to the Firefox/Mac community to see you go, not to mention a loss to the Firefox team in general, as I know you were a voice for Mac users in the bug reporting arena. Good luck on the dark side!

I had a couple questions for you:
Can that logo be community property now? I love the thing, and it'd be a shame to see it vanish. I'd venture to call it the official Firefox/Mac community logo.
Would you mind sharing some of your build proceedure? I can get it built, but I'm curious about how to get the pretty widgets in, as well as how you got the custom logo onto the About Firefox pane.

If you have any other tips for getting started in the building-every-day department, I'm sure there are several people who would be interested in your insights. Thanks for all your efforts!

Is anyone interested in maybe getting a team together to replicate Powerbook's efforts? I already build for my own G5 and my Powerbook from time to time, so I'd be willing to share my builds, though I wouldn't mind sharing the responsibility of daily builds with another person or two, not to mention sharing the knowledge of building. I can provide web space for the dmgs (maybe get a svelte domain name like foxymac.com or macfirefox.com), and could probably get a message board set up and going to track our builds and take comments on the nightlies, get a little Firefox/Mac community going. Space on the server isn't much of an issue, so we could certainly maintain as many nightlies as Powerbook did. I'm sure I'm opening a big can of worms here, but I know there's a community that uses these builds, and I'd be willing to help continue the tradition, though I'm not much for carrying the yoke alone.

Anyone that's interested in something like that, shoot me an e-mail:
elfurbe at gmail dot com
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krmathis
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Post by krmathis »

I'm back! No, I'm kidding.....

Ok I will tell you a bit more why I decided to leave you.
Firefox have been an very good browser the time I have used it (since may 2004), but I have always felt that we Mac OS X users have been getting the short end of the stick! It started with the Mac OS X specific cleanup/enhancement for Firefox 1.0, which Mozilla all of a sudden decided to delay for version 1.1.
Now version 1.1 is closing up, but I still dont see the progress I wanted to see.

I know Josh Aas are working on Cocoa form widgets, but those are not planed to be ready for 1.1. Meaning the Mac OS X enhanced Firefox 1.1 are going to ship with those butt ugly form widgets.

Another reason for me to switch are that I'm tired of reporting and living with serious bugs. Ok, I know I used an alpha browser. But some of the bugs are imo really annoying (ex. the copy/paste bug) and should get more attention.

So since going back to branch builds was not an options, because i really enjoy Gecko 1.8, I had to look elsewhere. I tried both Safari and Shiira, but none of them felt right.
I then decided to give Camino a real try and I fell in love. Mainly because I can continue to build G4 optimized builds, but also because I feel that Gecko are a more mature rendering engine than khtml (webkit).
Camino is not perfect either, but I really see its potential. It has not reached version 0.9 yet and are imo in front of Firefox. I certainly miss extensions, but I will manage to live without them.

So here I am, leaving all you faithfull users in the shadow while I move to the "other side"! :)
I really appreciate the feedback on my builds these 9 months and its been a pretty pleasant ride, but it seems to stop here.

Take care!
______________________________________________________________________________


elfurbe and others. When it comes to continuing my tracks I am more than willing to share my skills.
Since you already know how to compile Firefox that should not be to hard! :wink:

I start with posting my latest .mozconfig:
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/Firefo ... config.txt

Code: Select all

############################################################
#   File Name:  mozconfig
#   Author:     PowerBook
#   Purpose:    Build Firefox Community Edition
#   Compiler:   GCC 4.0.0 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5026)
#   Last edit:  2005.07.08
############################################################

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig

ac_add_options --enable-svg
ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-static
ac_add_options --enable-canvas
ac_add_options --enable-pthreads
ac_add_options --enable-prebinding
ac_add_options --enable-macos-target=10.3
ac_add_options --enable-optimize="-O3 -mcpu=7450 -faltivec -ftree-vectorize"

ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-shared

ac_add_options --with-macos-sdk=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk

ac_add_options --without-system-png
ac_add_options --without-system-mng
ac_add_options --without-system-nspr
ac_add_options --without-system-zlib
ac_add_options --without-system-jpeg


The "Fox around the Apple" are kind of my Trademark, but I will talk to MacGeneral (the creator) about it. Perhaps we could make it available to be used for future Firefox builders.

I have created a package with what you need to get started. Download here:
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/Firefo ... ox.tar.bz2 <- 16KB

The package includes the following:
* Build Firefox.rtf -> Describes the different steps to build Firefox and how to install the required software.
* build_firefox.sh -> A shellscript that automates the whole process. It also show you where to put the graphic files and the "Pretty form widget" files.
* mozconfig -> You guessed it, my latest Firefox .mozconfig
* 298799.1.patch -> My own patch to remove the imo ugly focusable tabs.
* Widgets -> The files needed to apply Philippe's "Pretty firm widgets' to Firefox 1.0+ (not 1.0.x).

You also find some useful information at these websites:
http://www.mozilla.org/build/mac.html
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/build.html

Just ask if you have more questions, as I am still hanging around here! :)

Kai Rune



PS! Ignore my grammar errors, as I am not native english speaking!
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krmathis
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Post by krmathis »

I have been talking to Arne Fahrenwalde (MacGeneral) about sharing the Firefox G4 icons.
He had no problems with is, as long as its ok for me. So we decided to publish the files at DeviantART.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/20705318/

NB! If you decide to use them in your own public builds, dont forget to give Arne Fahrenwalde the credits he deserve!
ozjason
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Post by ozjason »

powerbook - thanks so much for your efforts. It was your original builds of pre 1.0 FF that got me inspired to start building my own FF and TB builds. Other builders have sprung up too, in large part because of you. Thanks also to you and MacGeneral for agreeing to make those cool icons available to the Mac FF community. I look forward to trying out your Camino builds.

elfurbe - I am interested in some of your ideas for continuing this and am thinking over ideas of my own too. I've been building my own trunk nightlies for months but not releasing as I haven't read up on the post-1.0 branding policy changes (plus I dont have time to release daily). That's why I've stuck to releasing only 1.0x branch FF and TB builds. A community website/message board for Mac FF users would be very cool. Something I envision is a resource that could include different build options and even localised builds (of branch releases at least, probably not nightlies). I know there are a lot of non-English speaking users of these builds. Anyway, I may be able to provide some assistance to a group effort depending on the format and time requirements. My current build focus is a little different to pb's though.. I'm building for size and disabling svg,canvas, optmizing with -Os and using GCC 3.3 to produce binaries as small as possible (my build today is 23.8MB)

Lets see where this goes....
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krmathis
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Post by krmathis »

ozjason. Thank you for those kind words.
I know I inspired lots of people to start building G4 and G5 optimized Firefox and Camino builds.
But I also hope that some of you have learned so much that you can take over from here and continue towards Firefox 1.1 and beyond.

I basically started this "cult" and sure dont want be the one who end it! :D

[offtopic]
Camino optimized for ppc7450 are available on my website: http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
They seem rock solid, even if I experiment with patches and compiler flags. Todays build are 21.4 MB, when optimized for speed (-O3). Which is 6 MB less than my last Firefox build...
[/offtopic]
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elfurbe
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Post by elfurbe »

ozjason, perhaps we could just offer two sorts of build, one for "size", one for "speed", as it were. Trick out the icons a little and create some "models" of our community builds. Let people choose whatever they want all from one happy little page.

I'm about | |<--this close to having a fully automated build/package/upload/date-cycle shellscript fixed up, thanks mostly to Powerbook's build script. I'm going to try out the feasibility of croning 4 builds a night, G5, 7450, 7400 and G3 and auto-uploading them to a web server. If the building works out, then I'll write a wee php script to just take the names from the upload directory and create some simple indexes for them, and MAYBE even a pimpin' RSS feed that is customizable based on what processor arch you want to track...oh, it's building up to something, lemme tell ya.

I'm just a regular old english speaker myself, but I have no problem hosting localized versions, if people want to provide them. We can start out on a no-disk-quota system and see how big the repository gets, and then decide how many builds to keep on hand or something.

Hopefully we can find a couple more people interested. I'd love to have some dedicated bug testers and reporters to keep up powerbook's tradition on bugzilla, and maybe even post bug reports on all the builds we offer to the site, keep a running tab day-to-day of bugs found. Not something I've got time to do, but perhaps someone else might volunteer.

I don't want it to spiral out of control, but I think a more unified community of Mac Firefoxers might help us nudge Moz.org into fixing some of our bugs, and maybe win Powerbook back from the dark side with a functional 1.1... :D
reeper
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Post by reeper »

I have no building, scripting or hosting to offer but I just want to chime in as a faithful user of Powerbook's builds and say thanks as well. also, elfurbe and ozjason and any other mac builders out there...please...take up the cause. The optimized builds are so noticeably better than the official nightlies I just hate the idea of going back.

thanks again PB.
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