Firefox 2.0?

[robert delius royar]

Fri, 11 May 2007 (13:31 +0200 UTC) Vincent Lefevre wrote:

> On 2007-05-11 05:19:46 -0400, Randall Wood wrote:
>>
>> On 11 May 2007, at 02:48, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>>
>>> Am I missing something here? Would not a port come from the linux side and
>>> thereby x11?
>>> I mean are ports basically unix? Yes, I know of the aqua branch of ports.
>>
>> Mac OS X is basically unix. However, given all the minor differences
>> between unix versions and linux versions, it is pretty much impossible to
>> build a complex application that really does not care what variant of unix
>> its running on. [...]
>
> Does the X11 version run on Linux only? Or does it run on Solaris and
> FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD as well? In the latter case, isn't there a good
> chance to make it work on Mac OS X (Darwin) + X11 too without many
> changes? Or does Mac OS X have too many specificities not common to
> some other supported OS?
>
> Also, Firefox/Gecko uses GTK+ under X11. Hasn't most of the hard work
> been done by porting GTK+?
>
> --
> Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/>
> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

The last version of the Mozilla software that compiles and runs without 
extra effort under OS X/X11 was end-of-the-line 1.7.13.  To get it 
running easily, supporting printing and anti-aliased fonts, I had to 
install X-org over the top of Apple's X11.  I did not use the old 
Darwinports.

When I tried to move on to SeaMonkey, I found that I could compile it 
and run it, browse and most everything until I needed to open a dialog 
box in preferences or for file upload/download.  At that point the 
program stops responding.  It does not crash, at first, it just refuses 
to do anything until some internal timeout.  Later it may crash with a 
wild branch, so it is not possible to track exactly where the error is. 
Still, I believe I understand the issue.

During the build configured for the GTK2 engine, the process finds what 
it needs for GTK2/GDK and the VFS parts.  But deep inside the code the 
developers wrote, they have overridden the code for GTK and added a step 
requiring the "Aqua" frameworks.

The program that results appears to call one set of file-access widgets 
with the parameters for another.  I gave up trying to figure it out 
because I doubted I could fix it even if I did find which libraries were 
needed that were not being linked and where the code was that munged the 
configuration to force an Aqua build.

But someone who understands autoconf and automake could probably fix the 
problem pretty easily.  I suspect a post configure patch could disable 
all the Aqua stuff.  That would give the port developer a broken compile 
(probably), but the errors should point to where the make needs to be 
altered to create an OS X/GTK build.

By the way, I have never figured out how to get Java to run in the OS 
X/X111 Mozilla 1.7.13.  A number of my work sights now require Java, so 
I have stopped relying on the X11 version.

-- 
Dr. Robert Delius Royar                   Associate Professor of English
Morehead State University                             Morehead, Kentucky