Can ANYONE make a Mac build?

[KlarkKentThe3rd]

Do I need to be a programmer, or is this an automatic process?

[Moonchild]

You don't need to be a programmer; you're not changing code after all.
You DO need to have enough willingness to learn, because building something is never automatic silver platter stuff.
Yes it takes effort, but yes, anyone can learn how to.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Someone just get the guy's attention who has been doing builds.

[HarmonicResonance]

I originally misunderstood the question -- you are talking about official builds. I've built PM non-officially and it's definitely doable by mere mortals with some *NIX and Mac skills. I'm not sure what is needed beyond that, but I have the hardware and some time to help if the work can be split up.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

There are still a few issues preventing Pale Moon from going official. A reliable developer/package builder combo is one of them. I can test mac on my .. 10 year old imac but I cannot build. That is the biggest hindrance we have is that mac people seem inherently unreliable and at least one example of being unstable (yeah I know) or just plain unavailable as in not being able to put dedicated time into it for very long.

So the person has to also be a developer who can become familiar with UXP with it's classical mozilla style. Else, it will never be official. MAYBE Unstable Branding at BEST but that can only be achieved with a development commitment but still haven't solved all the issues yet to get a true release status.

The sad part is, if we had the right hardware capable of building and access to OS X 10.8 exactly.. We could resolve or work around these issues and ship something fairly decent in a relatively short period of time. But we don't. So we can't.

Of course feel free to roll your own but none of us either Pale Moon Project specifically or UXP Personnel broadly (the latter would be my status) have actually done it aside from those who have come and gone or pull a drive-by every now and again so we can't help as the big pink box with red text says.

Whatever happens beyond that requires commitment, dedication, and willingness for close coordination.

[KlarkKentThe3rd]

I am not going to be a constant maker of these builds, since the moment I could, I wold jump ship to Linux.

But I could theoretically make unofficial builds until that happens. If you want me to (maybe) try, please give me links to all the basic knowledge I need to understand before attempting a build. My machine is only EIGHT years old, so it's """modern""" enough to do this on.

[dubGUN]

i'd also like to do the occasional build but wanted to check some things in advance:

1. is there a mozconfig for osx?
2. does building a version for 10.6.8 fail only because of the compiler? or because of other things which can not be replaced easily?
3. is there a dependency list for osx? the ones listed there https://developer.palemoon.org/build/linux/ do likely not apply.

[dbsoft]

Currently it appears that the basic dependency list to build is OS X 10.11 or higher, Xcode 8 or higher (and the accompanying command line tools), python 2.7 (comes with most versions of OS X), autoconf 2.13, and yasm.

Home Brew (http://brew.sh) or MacPorts (http://macports.org) are used to get the last 2 of those dependencies (and python 2.7 if your macOS comes with 2.6).

[SpockFan02]

The Mac wiki page needs to be migrated, but it has a mozconfig suggestion and list of build dependencies. There's probably multiple reasons it won't build for Snow Leopard anymore but I couldn't tell you specifically off the top of my head; since Firefox 49 Mozilla hasn't supported anything below Mavericks and UXP was forked from 52.

My mozconfig looks like this:

Code: Select all

ac_add_options --enable-application=palemoon
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=obj-pm-@CONFIG_GUESS@
ac_add_options --with-macos-sdk=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi
ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-optimize=-O2
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-eme
ac_add_options --disable-safe-browsing
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-updater
ac_add_options --disable-webrtc
#ac_add_options --disable-personas
ac_add_options --target=x86_64-apple-darwin11

You will need:
Xcode
Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install)
clang/llvm 3.6 or newer
The 10.7/10.8 SDK (if you want it to run on older OS X versions; you can put them in the same place as the path in my mozconfig but you'll need to change a plist file to get Xcode to recognize them)
autoconf 2.13
ccache
libidl
yasm
python 2.7

You should be able to use either Homebrew or MacPorts to get what you need (minus Xcode and any MacOSX SDKs).

[Kendo]

the basic dependency list to build is OS X 10.11 or higher

I was able to upgrade my iMac 8.1 from 10.5.6 to 10.11 but it required being a Intel core 2 duo 64-bit (circa 2008).

To upgrade from 10.5 I first had to remove and install 10.6... purchased on Ebay because Apple no longer supports it. The USB enabled a new install after deleting some registry stuff. This was the only way.

Then once I had 10.6 installed I downloaded the free version of El Capitan 10.11 and installed as an upgrade.

But then I found that the machine was extremely slow, I had only 2GB of ram so I upgraded. iMac 8.1 is apparently rated at 4GB max but after more research I found others taking up to 6GB. I purchased a 6GB ram pack (2+4) on Ebay and yes the iMac 8.1 uses the 6GB. Apparently if more is installed, only 6 is used.

Now I can compile PM in about an hour.

[SpockFan02]

I can build on 10.9, just needed to update Python and Clang.

[dubGUN]

UXP was forked from 52.

okay thanks, that's sorted then. and one more thanks for the mozconfig

You should be able to use either Homebrew or MacPorts to get what you need (minus Xcode and any MacOSX SDKs).

yeah that's not a problem either way, i compile things myself.

I can build on 10.9, just needed to update Python and Clang.

where to build is not my concern but the result. i want the result to be as compatible as possible. however since it works with 10.8 despite more recent mozilla products' lower limit is 10.9, i'll give it a try with 10.6.8 anyway.

unfortunately apple's silly yearly major release cycle brings a lot of work to more complex setups and doesn't make it a good choice for professional use. if there was a little more "mainstream" software i'd switch to rhel/centos immediately but since that's not the case i try to use the osx versions for as long as possible.

[dbsoft]

I can build on 10.9, just needed to update Python and Clang.

Yeah that is true. I was saying 10.11 because that is the latest version that can run Xcode 8 which will build it right now without patches. If you install a newer version of clang that supports thread local storage you can build on older OS versions.