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List: mozilla-documentation
Subject: Mozilla Release FAQ (Release 5 May 1998 v1)
From: Pat Gunn <pgunn01 () ibm ! net>
Date: 1998-05-05 7:45:09
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Mozilla Release FAQ
Release 5 May 1998 (version 1 of the day)
Distribution: This document may be distributed and modified freely.
No guarantee of factuality in this FAQ is made, and it is maintained
by Pat Gunn <pgunn01@ibm.net>, who is not affiliated with Netscape.
Various other people have contributed to this FAQ in one form or
another. A recent version is kept at
http://junior.apk.net/~qc/dok/mozilla_faq
Sections:
1) General Questions about the Mozilla Project
2) Building Mozilla
3) Features, Patches
4) Teams
5) Meta-information
--- Section 1: General Questions about the Mozilla Project ---
1.1) What is Mozilla?
Mozilla is the name for a cousin to Netscape Communicator that is
being developed by the Free Software Community with the
cooperation and support of Netscape.
1.2) On what is Mozilla based?
Mozilla is based on a very early version of Netscape Communicator 5.0
with all of the code that Netscape is unable to release due to license
or export restrictions removed.
1.3) When was Mozilla released?
The first release of Mozilla was on 31 March 1998.
The second release of Mozilla was on 9 April 1998.
The third release of Mozilla was on 29 April 1998.
Intermediate releases are available via CVS (see section 1.8)
1.4) What is the current version of Mozilla?
The particular naming system used by Mozilla is not yet determined.
Until it is decided, it would probably be best to refer to the
current version of Mozilla as the April 28th (tarball) release. Updated versions
via CVS would probably best be best designated by the date
the source was retrieved via CVS, like so: April 29th (CVS) release.
1.5) Who is working on Mozilla?
Several Netscape engineers, as well as plenty of people who have
no affiliation with Netscape. You too can work on Mozilla, provided
you have some necesary skills and software.
See section 4 for details.
1.6) What resources are available to the Mozilla community?
Webpages:
Mozilla Project Homepage
http://www.mozilla.org
Netscape Developer Program Website
http://devedge.netscape.com
OpenScape (News Site)
http://www.openscape.org
Mozilla Info Center (News Site)
http://www.jipes.com/mozilla
Netscape plans for Future versions of Communicator
http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/communicator/future
General Info Page (Houses some projects)
http://mozilla.alsutton.com
Mozilla Cryptology Group
http://mozilla-crypto.ssleay.org
Code Map of Mozilla
http://prometheus.frii.com/~gnat/mrm
(Unreachable at last try)
http://mozilla.globalwave.com
Mozilla Logo Contest
http://mozilla-contest.hungry.com
Archive of Mozilla Newsgroups (along with others)
http://progressive-comp.com/Lists
Home of QT Port of Mozilla
http://www.troll.no/qtscape
Big Resource site
http://contributor.devel.org
Vector Graphics Resources
http://www.lizardfx.org
Mozilla's Dominion (Resources page)
http://www.trailerpark.com/phase1/arielb/netscape
DOS Port team
http://idt.net/~kassoc/dos
IRC:
Server irc.mozilla.org channel #mozilla
Usenet:
All newsgroups in the netscape.public.mozilla.* hierarchy
If your news server doesn't carry these, you can use the
news server news://news.mozilla.org
(Some people receive the newsgroups via a mailing
list. Take this into consideration when posting things)
FTP:
See http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html for FTP sites
1.7) Under which license terms was Mozilla released?
Mozilla is released under the NPL (Netscape Public License)
which is in some ways similar to the GNU GPL, and in some
ways similar to a BSD-style license. Take a look at
http://www.mozilla.org/NPL/
for details.
1.8) What's CVS, and what does it have to do with Mozilla?
CVS is a system which is used to synchronize source code
between developers. It's used to distribute changes to the
Mozilla source without requiring frequent huge tarballs to be
downloaded. Check out http://www.cyclic.com/ for more info on CVS.
For specific info on updating your current mozilla source with
CVS, see http://www.mozilla.org/cvs.html
1.9) What are all of the codenames given to various Netscape/Mozilla projects?
Raptor is a HTML rendering engine that'll eventually replace
the current rendering engine for Mozilla. You can download some
source of it at the main mozilla site, which provides a basic
viewer application.
Gemini was a previous rendering engine project, replaced by Raptor
Aurora is the Navigation Center in Mozilla and Navigator5
Mercury is Communicator 5
Apollo refers to the Suitespot servers (v4)
1.10) What are all these acronyms people are using in the newsgroup?
Here are a few that are specific to the Mozilla newsgroups:
FE = Front End -- The part of Mozilla that handles the interface
BE = Back End -- The part of Mozilla that does all the
behind-the-scenes stuff
NSPR = Netscape Portable RunTime -- An abstraction layer over
the local OS
GTK = A free GUI toolkit native to Unix
Qt = Another GUI toolkit
XP = Cross Platform
1.11) I'm wondering how to do XXX with Navigator 3.x...
The mozilla newsgroups are intended to be used by people
who will be working with Mozilla, either in an organizational
fashion, suggesting features, or coding. Discussion of how to
use Navigator or Communicator would be better suited towards
other netscape.public.* groups outside of netscape.public.mozilla.*
1.12) I went and made a suggestion and people were rude to me. Why?
If you posted it to the mailing list/newsgroups, remember that on
Usenet, people are not always polite to each other. Some people
are just rude, and some people have a low tolerance for uninformed
people. If you're new to the mozilla newsgroups, you probably
should be reading the newsgroup for a few days regularly before
you post anything. And read this FAQ :)
1.13) I did all that, and people were still rude to me. Why?
If you're proposing reworking something (like HTTP, HTML, etc)
you're expected to have a pretty good knowlege of it first.
For example, before you make a proposal to compress whole
webpages before sending them, devising a new protocol to do
so, research how HTTP works, how HTML works, and think about
all the good *and* bad points of reworking things. To start
understanding the issues with this example, you should dig
up the RFCs for the relevant protocols, any documents written
on the subject, etc. For this particular example, you would want
to go look at
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Networkdynamics.html
http://junior.apk.net/~qc/dok/protocol/
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2068.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/
--- Section 2: Building Mozilla ---
2.1) I get x error when trying to build Mozilla - what's wrong?
First, make sure that you have the latest release of the Mozilla
source. Secondly, ensure that you have fully read the build
instructions for your platform. These instructions are included
in the source tree, and are also available on the mozilla website:
Unix: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/tplist/catBuild/unxbuild.htm
Win32: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/tplist/catBuild/winbuild.htm
Mac: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/tplist/catBuild/macbuild.htm
Finally, if you can't get far at all into the compilation, you
might not be using GNU make. Grab the latest version of gmake from
ftp://ftp.uu.net/systems/gnu/
Regarding shells, I would like to recommend the following:
If you are using Unix, I recommend using bash-family shells
for the build, because of the better control over
redirection (in case you want to log errors and messages)
If you are using Win32, using the default cmd.exe (as
opposed to 4DOS or 4NT) will probably yield better results.
Regarding compilation options, it would be good NOT to compile with
optimization, because it's much slower, and on Windows
platforms, there's a bug in VC++ that makes Mozilla crash
in many common circumstances if you optimize.
2.2) What platforms have had successful builds so far?
This list will be updated with time, but (according to
netscape.public.mozilla.general) the following platforms
have been built successfully:
Solaris 2.4, 2.5, 2.6
FreeBSD 2.2, 3.0
Linux 2.0, 2.1
MacOS
WinNT 4.0
IRIX 5.3, 6.2, 6.4
Win95 (See 2.7)
FreeBSD 3.0 (see 2.8)
Digital Unix 4.0
NetBSD
OpenBSD
HP/UX 9.05, 10.20 (see 2.9)
(Note: No OS's that haven't been released will be listed, because
there are likely several builds of the unreleased OS, and it's thus
unclear what builds work and what don't)
2.3) What do I need to compile on Win32?
You need to go grab the usertools package from
http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32/
In addition, you need Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2 or 5.0.
Grab the latest patches to it if you don't have them
already. Perl for Windows would be another good thing to get.
(see http://www.perl.com)
2.4) What do I need to compile on a Unix system?
You need to have a working compiler (GCC 2.7.2+ will work),
gmake, Motif libraries (see 2.6 if not), and the X Window system.
2.5) What do I need to compile on a Macintosh system?
You need Codewarrior Pro 2, including some software from the
Codewarrior CD:
PowerPlant 1.8, MSL, Makestub-MPW
In addition, you need:
Waste 1.3
ftp://ftp.boingo.com/dan/WASTE/waste-13.hqx
CWaste 1.6
http://www.bact.wisc.edu/CWASTEEdit/CWASTEEdit.sit.hqx
Menu Sharing Toolkit
ftp://ftp.scripting.com/userland/menuSharingToolkit4.1.sit.hqx
Mercutio 1.5 (SDK only)
ftp://ftp.digitalalchemy.com/pub/digitalalchemy/mercutio-SDK.sit.bin
Internet Config 1.4 SDK
ftp://ftp.share.com/pub/internet-configuration/ICProgKit1.4.sit
AEGizmos 1.4.2
http://www.mooseyard.com/Jens/Software/
MacPerl5 MPWTool
ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/software/platform/macos/perl/Mac_Perl_519r4_tool.bin
ToolServer
ftp://dev.apple.com/devworld/Tool_Chest/Core_Mac_OS_Tools/MPW_etc./MPW-GM/MPW/ToolServer.sit.hqx
Tool FrontEnd
ftp://dev.apple.com/devworld/Periodicals/develop/develop25/develop_Issue_25_code/ToolFrontEnd.sit.hqx
Patch 2.1
http://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/ftp/software/platform/macos/src/HTML/MPW_C.html
2.6) How do I build with Lesstif?
This is still largely a work in progress. However, it would
help to have the latest Lesstif. Grab it at
ftp://ftp.hungry.com/pub/hungry/lesstif/lesstif-current.tar.gz
2.7) How do I build with Win95?
The current version of the source should compile on Win95, barring
any other problems. The first source release did not compile without
certain patches on Win95.
2.8) How do I build with FreeBSD?
Get the patches at http://www.freebsd.org/~eivind/moz_port.tgz
These should eventually make it into the main source distribution.
(Have they made it in? If anyone knows, drop me a note)
2.9) How do I build with HP/UX?
Visit http://hpux.csc.liv.ac.uk/hppd/mozilla/patch.html
and grab their patches.
(Have these patches made it in? If anyone knows, drop me a note)
2.10) How do I build with Linux 2.1?
Go into ns/nsprpub/config/ and make a link from LinuxELF2.0.mk
to LinuxELF2.1.mk
(This might not be a concern anymore with Tarball 3 and onwards)
2.11) I'm *still* having problems getting mozilla to build on my platform!
Take a look at ns/config/your_platform.mk
Platforms that aren't used too often might not have a
fully correct platform-specific makefile. Try to correct anything
that looks like it's causing the error (comment out existing lines,
copy them, and *then* modify). If you're really unlucky, you'll
actually need to step through the build, at each failure correcting
a makefile somewhere or manually building something. IRIX 6.2/GCC
still requires this method of build.
2.12) I'm trying to build Mozilla on an unsupported Unix. What do I do?
Go into ns/config/ and copy the platform that's closest to your
platform in the Unix evolutionary tree to `uname -s`.mk
(note the backtics). Change anything you need to. Do the
same thing in ns/nsprpub/config/
In the main source, find other platforms that can't cope with what your
Unix can't cope with, and modify the #ifdefs and similar to include and
exclude what your Unix needs/can't handle. Eventually autoconf might
magically do this kind of stuff for you, but that's some time away.
2.13) What is the *best* way to build on Linux, with regards to stability?
In order:
libc5/Motif 1.2 - Official builds use this
libc5/Motif 2.0 - Has scrolling problems
glibc2/Motif 2.1 - Some scrolling, locale problems
glibc2/Motif 1.2 - Locale problems, not recommended
glibc2/Motif 2.0 - Locale, scrolling problems, not recommended
?/Lesstif - Needs a lot of work
2.14) In what directory should I be in order to get a CVS update of the source?
You should be at the top of the source (the directory with the top-level
makefile)
2.15) When I try to use CVS, I get an error about no home directory
You need to set the HOME environment variable to a valid directory,
as CVS was designed with Unix in mind, and wants to put a file in your
home directory (the password file)
--- Section 3: Features, Patches ---
3.1) What platforms is Mozilla available for?
Mozilla is currently targeted for Win32, Macintosh, and
Unix/X systems. There are efforts underway to port Mozilla to
OS/2, Rhapsody, BeOS, AmigaOS, as well as pure Java.
3.2) What does Mozilla lack that Communicator has?
Mail and News were removed because they were based on proprietary
database software. Java (but not Javascript) was removed because it is
the property of Sun. SSL (secure sockets layer) was removed because of
export restrictions. Netcaster was removed because it relies on Java.
AOL Instant Messenger was removed because it's proprietary to AOL.
Mail and News eventually will be back, with the proprietary portions
removed.
3.3) What does Mozilla have that wasn't in Communicator 4?
Mozilla has (at least) the following new features:
A detachable bookmarks menu
XML support
Aurora
3.4) What's with the icon?
The N logo is only to be present on Netscape's Communicator.
This will serve as a way for an end-user to determine if they
have Mozilla or Communicator. The icon that's distributed in
the source is just a sample, and several people have pages that
are collecting proposed replacement icons. See the URLs at the top
to find some. If you've made an icon, submit it there.
3.5) Where can I get a binary?
Mozilla.org does not provide Mozilla binaries. Various people have put
up compiled binaries here and there. Here are a few pointers:
Linux/x86 2.x ELF (req glibc)
http://www.cuc.ml.org/mozilla-static-motif-binary.gz
Linux/x86 2.x ELF (uses the Qt toolkit)
http://www.troll.no/qtscape/download.html
Linux/x86 2.x ELF (uses the Lesstif toolkit)
http://users.loa.com/~apple/mozilla/
Linux/x86 2.x ELF (req Motif 2.0, dynamically linked)
ftp://ftp.wizzy.com/pub/wizzy/
Win32
http://www.aliweb.com/mozilla/
http://www.globaldom.com/mozilla.htm
http://mozbin32.hypermart.net
Win32 (uses Qt toolkit)
http://www.troll.no/qtscape/download.html
MacOS
ftp://azrael.uoregon.edu/pub/mozilla/mac/MozillaPPCDebug.sit.hqx
3.6) On Win32, it fails to build, with the message "'.\WIN32' unexpected"
You didn't properly set the environment variables -- you must not
include a space at the end of the set statements (be careful if
you are cut'n'pasting).
3.7) On Win32, it fails to build, with directory-related errors
The full path to the source must not include any spaces.
Additionally, the source must be extracted with an intact
directory structure by a utility that understands long
filenames. If in doubt, grab Info-Zip at
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/infozip
3.8) On Unix, it fails to build, with complaints about lcong48 and seed48!
You probably have GCC 2.8.1, which currently won't work
with Mozilla. Get 2.8.0 or 2.7.2+ (2.8.0 has some problems, 2.7.2 would
be best, at least until the problems with 2.8.1 are ironed out)
3.9) I *really* want the security stuff that was taken out
Check out the http://mozilla-crypto.ssleay.org/ resource, but
note that it may be illegal for you to use it in your
country due to patent laws.
3.10) I *really* want Java
Check out http://www.place.org/~stevemw/java/mozilla-activator/
for a view of the issues involved in getting Java working on Mozilla.
Eventually Java will probably be workable via a project to
use a plug-innable JVM or the system JVM.
3.11) How do I tweak the interface (replace the logo, etc)?
See http://www.mozilla.org/docs/refList/user-interface/index.html
for instructions, the files are:
Unix/X: ns/cmd/xfe/icons/
Windows: ns\cmd\winfe\res\
MacOS: ns:cmd:macfe:rsrc:communicator: (Use Resedit)
3.12) Where can I get patches?
There is not currently a central repository of patches. However,
via CVS, you can keep up with the latest source from Mozilla.
3.13) I made a patch! How do I submit it?
The current best way to do this is to put it on the web somewhere
(preferably in diff format), and post an URL to it to
netscape.public.mozilla.patches
If you can't, just post it to netscape.public.mozilla.patches
Eventually, a better way will appear.
3.14) Where are some interesting patches?
Take a look at these URLs:
Fixes blink:
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~dat95pkn/mozilla/
Fixes preferences dialogs, stops composer autostart:
ftp://ftp.dontknow.com/pub/mozilla/
Fixes some Aurora quirks on MacOS:
http://www.arcanasw.com/moz5tech/cflextable4.3.98/
Several little bugfixes:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Campus/4998/mozilla.html
--- Section 4: Teams ---
4.1) I want to add X feature to Mozilla. Who do I contact?
First, you should make sure that Mozilla doesn't already have the
feature you wish to add. There have been changes since Communicator
4.0. Check out section 3 for details. Assured that it's not already
there, you should post to the mozilla usenet groups, asking for
helpers. Finally, you should make sure that someone is not already
working on the code you would need to modify to implement your
feature. On www.mozilla.org, there is a list of module 'owners'.
This system ensures that 2 people are not working on the same
part at the same time. Check for for the module owner, and
contact him/her. The specific area that you can find this is at
http://www.mozilla.org/owners.html
4.2) I don't code but want to see feature X added to Mozilla. Who do I contact?
Again, make sure the feature isn't already there. Knowing that,
post something to netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist.
4.3) I need something to do! Any ideas?
I suspect that making a website that's aimed at introducing people
to mozilla, easing programmers into the development would be
popular. Something like "Get the stuff you need to develop" ->
"Get the mozilla code" -> "Here are the mozilla subsystems"
Or document in easy to read language a protocol that mozilla
uses (http://junior.apk.net/~qc/dok/protocol/ would be a good place
to start).
--- Section 5: Meta Information ---
5.1) What changed since the last version?
Fixed 1.9, Updated 1.6 (named sites), Added 2.15
5.2) What other versions of this FAQ are out there?
Various other people have decided to take the original of this FAQ
and modify it, usually making a web version. Some of these have
more (or less) information than this FAQ includes.
5.3) Where can I find other versions of the FAQ?
Check out:
http://www.uwasa.fi/~e75644/mozilla/MozFAQ.html
http://www.godin.on.ca/mozilla/mozilla_faq
http://gloppo.hypermart.net/moz-faq.html
http://www.trailerpark.com/phase1/arielb/netscape/faq.htm
[There are more...]
5.4) Does the author mind if I make my own version, HTMLify it, or whatever?
Nope. Go for it. I would suggest you try to keep looking at mine
occasionally, so you can add new things that I do, but you can
do whatever you want to with it.
5.5) What changes can I expect in the future?
5.6) The FAQ is wrong on section X.X! What can I do about it?
Mail me! I don't bite (much) ... pgunn01@ibm.net
--
---------------------------------------------------
Pat Gunn, moderator:comp.sys.newton.announce comoderator:comp.os.os2.moderated
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -- Dr Who
http://junior.apk.net/~qc
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