BeOS Prerequisites

This page describes the requirements for building mozilla.org software on BeOS or yellowTab Zeta.

Hardware

• Disk space: Optimized (stripped) builds require about 600 MB including source; for debug builds, expect 2 GB.
• 256 MB or more memory are recommened; more is better, especially for debug builds.

Software

You need the following software:

• These are part of Zeta, but may need to be installed on other BeOS versions:
  • make 3.79.1 or later, available from Bebits: GNU utilities page
  • perl 5.8.0 or later, available from Bebits: perl page
  • cvs 1.11 or later, available from Bebits: cvs page, latest version
• gcc 2.95.3, available from Bebits: gcc page
  Please use version 2.95.3, not the later version. After installation according to the package instructions, BeOS R5 users must delete the symlink /boot/develop/tools/gcc-2.95.3_binutils-2.15/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-beos/2.95.3-beos-041202/specs, then right-click on specs.R5 in the same folder, create a link and rename this new link specs.
  • The compiler that ships with Zeta can only use -O1 (also known as -O) optimization; higher optimization levels will cause Mozilla to not work correctly.
• glib and libIDL, available from mozilla contrib beos pages
  The sample .mozconfig assumes these are installed in /boot/home.

The .mozconfig file

In addition to the general .mozconfig contents described in Configuring Build Options, this file should contain:

export GLIB_CONFIG=/boot/home/glib-libIDL-beos/glib/bin/glib-config
mk_add_options GLIB_CONFIG=/boot/home/glib-libIDL-beos/glib/bin/glib-config
export LIBIDL_CONFIG=/boot/home/glib-libIDL-beos/libIDL/bin/libIDL-config
mk_add_options LIBIDL_CONFIG=/boot/home/glib-libIDL-beos/libIDL/bin/libIDL-config

ac_add_options --disable-updater

A more thorough discussion about building SeaMonkey and Firefox under BeOS is on the Bebits Wiki.

Note: Mozilla for BeOS requires RTTI, so do not use the --disable-cpp-rtti option.