With all that Firefox 3.6 news lately, you might have asked yourself where to get it for your 64 Bit system, because though the nightly builds also include x86_64 (to make sure developers don’t break anything), official releases – like latest 3.6 release – don’t.
Here’s what I do:
- Download the sources (you could also checkout the repository)
apt-get build-dep iceweasel- Unpack the sources
- If you want to include a language, e.g. German, execute:
hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/de
You should now have the sources directory (in mozilla-1.9.2/) and the release version of your preferred localization (in de/). These steps were pretty straight forward, but what really matters is your build-script.
Just building the sources doesn’t suffice, at least for a Gnome user, so here’s my “.mozconfig”-file:
export LDFLAGS="-lgcov -static-libgcc" mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/ff-opt ac_add_options --enable-update-packaging ac_add_options --enable-update-channel=release ac_add_options --prefix=/opt/firefox ac_add_options --enable-64bit ac_add_options --enable-application=browser ac_add_options --enable-optimize ac_add_options --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2 ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo ac_add_options --enable-strip ac_add_options --enable-svg-renderer=cairo ac_add_options --enable-canvas ac_add_options --enable-official-branding ac_add_options --enable-xinerama ac_add_options --enable-crypto ac_add_options --disable-tests ac_add_options --disable-gtktest ac_add_options --disable-debug ac_add_options --disable-accessibility ac_add_options --disable-installer ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter ac_add_options --with-java-include-path=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/include/ ac_add_options --with-java-bin-path=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/bin ac_add_options --with-system-zlib ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg mk_add_options MOZ_CO_LOCALES=de ac_add_options --enable-ui-locale=de ac_add_options --with-l10n-base=../../
The last three lines should be changed according to the language used or commented if you want to build en_US only.
Save the above code to a file and link it to “mozilla-1.9.2/.mozconfig” (or create that file, doesn’t matter).
Finally, to compile the sources and build them change into mozilla-1.9.2 and execute:
make -f client.mk build make -C ff-opt/browser/installer
You will find the distributable Firefox package, “firefox-3.6.de.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2”, in “ff-opt/dist”.
I’d advise to extract, rename it to “firefox-3.6”, move that folder to /opt and symlink it to “/opt/firefox”.
This will enable you to always use “/opt/firefox/firefox”, no matter what version (for a symlink to “/usr/local/bin/firefox” for example).
Leave a comment if you’ve got any additional tipps.