mozilla-nss

[worker201]

I am trying to get mozilla-nss and mozilla-nspr running on my not-entirely-open computer. Normally, these are included with mozilla, right? Well, on my system architecture, those libraries are not available for sharing. I would hate to have to build mozilla from source.

I downloaded the packages from mozilla's ftp depositories. Unfortunately, they are not set up in a way that I understand. I was looking for the standard configure, makefile, etc setup. Instead, I see all these cvs folders. Mozilla source seems to be packaged this way too. Have any tips on dealing with this? I have very little idea what to do with cvs stuff.

I'm a bit embarassed, because I've become quite the pro at dealing with autoconf/automake builds of all kinds of things, and then I see some unfamiliar stuff, and I am helpless. Can you give me a hand?

[Void Main]

Not-entirely-open? I assume you already have mozilla installed? What distro? Without more details if it is an RPM based distro you would install the RPMs of the same version of mozilla that you have installed. For instance if you are running Fedora Core 2 you could download all the mozilla* RPMS from here:

http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/2 ... S.updates/

And just "rpm -Uvh mozilla*". I am sure I must be misunderstanding your question though.

[worker201]

Sorry, that's just my underhanded way of saying that I am trying to get these things installed on my Mac. I have Mozilla running, but it's the standard binary OSX version. I need to use nss and nspr for development purposes, and they are not available to me in the binary package.

Since I am working in the free and open parts of the OSX subsystem, I think that qualifies for discussion here, right? If not, I can take my problems elsewhere. But I trust you to set me straight.

[Void Main]

Since I am working in the free and open parts of the OSX subsystem, I think that qualifies for discussion here, right? If not, I can take my problems elsewhere. But I trust you to set me straight.

Actually the subsystem is open but it is not Free (as in freedom) but that's beside the point. You really would get better answers asking these questions on a Mac forum though since I have never touched one. It sounds to me like you need to grab the source and "./configure;make;make install" but again, I have no clue when it comes to a Mac. MacOS != Linux so beating around the bush really isn't going to buy you much. :) You see the point of this site is to help people who have Linux mainly because Linux is what I enjoy and something I know a lot about. That's why if you look at the categories on the main index they all start with "Linux". It's almost like taking your brand new BMW into the Mercedes dealer to get it fixed. It just doesn't compute. To install mozilla-nss on my system I just type "apt-get install mozilla-nss" and it magically downloads and install the correct software. :)

[worker201]

All my latest fun has been occuring from the command line, so I honestly cannot tell the difference between Linux and OSX at this level. Libraries have a different extension, but that's about it. Once you pop the terminal open, installing software from source is pretty much the same on ppc as it is on x86.

Except for mozilla stuff. Configure-make doesn't seem to work on nss-3.9.2, because I can't find the damn configure file! Mozilla puts its stuff together differently than gnu stuff. Even pango was easier to get installed than nss.

The problem with Mac forums is that nobody there knows what is going on with the subsystem. Terminal is a bad word to most Mac users, and they have no idea what mozilla-nss or pango or libxslt even are. If you know how to grep and awk and vi, then you are the person that can answer my questions. I go to Mac forums if Quicktime crashes.

[Void Main]

But anything I would suggest I would be suggesting blindly. I'm the kind of person that actually has to do something before making any sort of suggestion (don't like to speak unless I know what I am talking about). Not having ever built Mozilla from source I can't even speak about that. As I said, everything I need is already built so I never had to build it and I like to have my software managed by a package management system (RPM, deb, etc, like to have tidy systems). The last time I built a browser was Mosaic on AIX around 12 years ago. I hacked in some big brother syslogging. Subscribing to the Mozilla list is probably where I would go if I were you (or maybe there is a forum there, but developers usually like to use the mailing lists).

[worker201]

Well, okay, I figured out how to do it myself. Mozilla doesn't make it easy to find this sort of information, but it is out there. I've never had to use cvs before, but it seems like a pretty neat tool. I don't know why Mozilla insists on everything being checked out, but anyway.

For those of you who want to learn how this is done, here are the instructions (tcsh, other shells adjust accordingly):

Code: Select all

setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot
cvs login
cvs co -r NSPR_4_4_1_RTM mozilla/nsprpub
cvs co -r DBM_1_61_RTM mozilla/dbm mozilla/security/dbm
cvs co -r NSS_3_9_RTM mozilla/security/coreconf mozilla/security/nss
cd mozilla/security/nss
make nss_build_all

That's it.
So now I have used cvs, and I won't be so scared of it next time.
(These instructions are general, and there are other variables that need to be set for certain systems. But this worked on the Mac)

[Void Main]

I actually use CVS to keep a quick backup of all verions of my critical config files, web site, etc. It's a great tool for keeping a history of changes. And of course I keep all my own code that I write in CVS. At work it's of great use when you have multiple people making changes to code. You know who did what and know who to blame when something breaks. :)