Firefox-128.3.1esr

Installation of Firefox

The configuration of Firefox is accomplished by creating a mozconfig file containing the desired configuration options. A default mozconfig is created below. To see the entire list of available configuration options (and an abbreviated description of some of them), issue ./mach configure -- --help | less. You may also wish to review the entire file and uncomment any other desired options. Create the file by issuing the following command:

cat > mozconfig << "EOF"
# If you have a multicore machine, all cores will be used by default.

# If you have installed (or will install) wireless-tools, and you wish
# to use geolocation web services, comment out this line
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi

# Comment out the following line if you wish not to use Google's Location
# Service (GLS).  Note that if Geoclue is installed and configured to use
# GLS (as the BLFS instruction does), Firefox can access GLS via Geoclue
# anyway.  On the other hand if Geoclue is not installed (or not properly
# configured) and this line is commented out, the website requiring a
# location service will not function properly.
ac_add_options --with-google-location-service-api-keyfile=$PWD/google-key

# startup-notification is required since firefox-78

# Uncomment the following option if you have not installed PulseAudio and
# want to use alsa instead
#ac_add_options --enable-audio-backends=alsa

# Comment out following options if you have not installed
# recommended dependencies:
ac_add_options --with-system-icu
ac_add_options --with-system-libevent
ac_add_options --with-system-libvpx
ac_add_options --with-system-nspr
ac_add_options --with-system-nss
ac_add_options --with-system-webp

# The libdav1d library (av1 decoder) requires nasm. Uncomment this
# if nasm has not been installed. Do not uncomment this if you have
# ffmpeg installed.
#ac_add_options --disable-av1

# You cannot distribute the binary if you do this.
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding

# Stripping is now enabled by default.
# Uncomment these lines if you need to run a debugger:
#ac_add_options --disable-strip
#ac_add_options --disable-install-strip

# Disabling debug symbols makes the build much smaller and a little
# faster. Comment this if you need to run a debugger.
ac_add_options --disable-debug-symbols

# The BLFS editors recommend not changing anything below this line:
ac_add_options --prefix=/usr
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-updater

# Enabling the tests will use a lot more space and significantly
# increase the build time, for no obvious benefit.
ac_add_options --disable-tests

# This enables SIMD optimization in the shipped encoding_rs crate.
ac_add_options --enable-rust-simd

ac_add_options --enable-system-ffi
ac_add_options --enable-system-pixman

ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg
ac_add_options --with-system-png
ac_add_options --with-system-zlib

# Sandboxing works well on x86_64 but might cause issues on other
# platforms, e.g. i686.
[ $(uname -m) != x86_64 ] && ac_add_options --disable-sandbox

# Using sandboxed wasm libraries has been moved to all builds instead
# of only mozilla automation builds. It requires extra llvm packages
# and was reported to seriously slow the build. Disable it.
ac_add_options --without-wasm-sandboxed-libraries

# The following option unsets Telemetry Reporting. With the Addons Fiasco,
# Mozilla was found to be collecting user's data, including saved passwords and
# web form data, without users consent. Mozilla was also found shipping updates
# to systems without the user's knowledge or permission.
# As a result of this, use the following command to permanently disable
# telemetry reporting in Firefox.
unset MOZ_TELEMETRY_REPORTING

mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/firefox-build-dir
EOF

If building with system ICU, adapt the line break mapping for ICU 74 or later. This construct adds five entries to a c++ array.

for i in {43..47}; do
   sed -i '/ZWJ/s/}/,CLASS_CHARACTER&/' intl/lwbrk/LineBreaker.cpp 
done

Compile Firefox by issuing the following commands:

If the geolocation APIs are needed:

echo "AIzaSyDxKL42zsPjbke5O8_rPVpVrLrJ8aeE9rQ" > google-key

Now invoke the Python mach script to compile the package.

export MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none &&
export MOZBUILD_STATE_PATH=${PWD}/mozbuild          &&
./mach build

The mozconfig above disables the tests because they use a lot more time and disk space for no obvious benefit. If you have nevertheless enabled them, you can run the tests by executing ./mach gtest. This will require a network connection, and to be run from within an Xorg session - there is a popup dialog when it fails to connect to ALSA (that does not create a failed test). One or two tests will fail. To see the details of the failure(s) you will need to log the output from that command so that you can review it.

Now, as the root user:

export MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none &&
./mach install

Empty the environment variables which were set above:

unset MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE
unset MOZBUILD_STATE_PATH

mkdir -pv /usr/share/applications &&
mkdir -pv /usr/share/pixmaps      &&

MIMETYPE="text/xml;text/mml;text/html;"                            &&
MIMETYPE+="application/xhtml+xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;" &&
MIMETYPE+="x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https"           &&

cat > /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop << EOF &&
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
Exec=firefox %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=firefox
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=$MIMETYPE
StartupNotify=true
EOF

unset MIMETYPE &&

ln -sfv /usr/lib/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png \
        /usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.png