WinFE Build Instructions

This document explains how to build Mozilla for the Windows platform. WinFE is the Windows front end module.

Required Tools:

Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
GNU Tools for Windows:You can find these all over the web. Specifically, you'll need:

                cp.exe



                rm.exe

                gmake.exe



                shmsdos.exe



                uname.exe

Additionally, there are Netscape-developed tools that need to be built prior to your first compile. These are covered in the build section.

Setting up:

You need a Pentium with at least a 133 MHz processor and at least 250 megs (NTFS partition) or 500 megs (FAT partition) of hard drive space. You need to have a minimum of 64 megs of memory in order to build this tree. Having at least 128 megs of memory will make your debugging experience noticeably less agonizing
The preferred platform is NT 4.0. NT 3.51 will also work, and Win95 might work if you're lucky. Maybe.
Install MSVC. If you don't choose to have the MSVC install modify your environment variables for PATH, INCLUDE, and LIB information, be sure to run VCVARS32.BAT out of the MSVC bin directory prior to attempting to build.
Download and install GNU tools. Put them in your path.
Install Mozilla source.
There are several environment variables you will need to set, either manually or via a script within a command session, or by setting them in your system environment located through the Control Panel | System icon. Those variables are:

set MOZ_BITS=32
set MOZ_DEBUG=1 (don't set this if you want to build an optimized release build)
set MOZ_GOLD=1
set MOZ_MEDIUM=1
set MOZ_NT=351 (if running NT 3.51, don't set otherwise)
set MOZ_OUT=(location of resulting executable and totally optional, see Notes for more details)
set MOZ_SRC=(top of your tree, drive letter and path, i.e. set MOZ_SRC=d:\mozilla_src. The topmost directory under this should be ns)
set MOZ_TOOLS=(location of the bin directory containing your GNU tools. The build looks for MOZ_TOOLS\bin\gmake.exe, so make sure your MOZ_TOOLS is figured appropriately)
set NO_SECURITY=1
set NSPR20=1

Building:

You need to be running a vanilla command prompt. Other shells may work, but you might have to tweak makefiles.
Build the tools: This generates several tools that handle things like dependency generation

Build the whole lizard: This will do a complete build of the source tree. You will end up with a mozilla.exe at the end.

If you want to build communicator a piece at a time, these are the steps that client.mak steps through. If you successfully ran the client.mak step above, you don't need to do this.
Build the back end: This builds cross platform components like NSPR and the shared library modules. All of the interesting output from this part of the build will end up in ns\dist, under public\ if it's a library header, and under WIN32_D.OBJ\ (or WIN32_O.OBJ\ for an optimized build) if it's a dynamic or static library. The exception is the NSPR public headers, which live in WIN32_D.OBJ\include.

Build the front end: This builds and links into the final executable, mozilla.exe.

Notes:

MOZ_OUT: If you don't set this, mozilla.exe will be generated into ns\cmd\winfe\mkfiles32\x86dbg (or x86rel for optimized builds)
This build process does not use Visual C++ generated project files for several reasons having to do with (among other things) size, maintainability, and the long term desire to start using more of tools like gmake, or plug and play developer tools. This does not preclude you from using the Visual C++ IDE, or it's debugger (somebody fill this out with more detail).
All of the DLLs that you need to run mozilla.exe get copied automagically into your output directory as the last part of build, so all you need to do is cd into x86dbg and run mozilla.exe to get a runnable browser.
On a Pentium II 266 MHz machine with 128 megs of memory, it takes approximately 30 minutes to build. Your mileage may vary.