Arch Linux User Repository

PKGBUILD has been updated. Major changes:

• Downloads Firefox ESR and localization using the source array. Files are saved for reuse.
• Saves freshly patched IceCat sources in a tarball for reuse.
• Saves the PGO profile for reuse.

Notes:

• Currently requires clang/llvm 17, which has to be built from AUR.
• Wayland users, consider setting _build_pgo_xvfb=false. This will use xwayland-run for profiling.
• PGO should work now, but if it doesn't and you're willing to go without, try _build_pgo=false.
• Running out of RAM? Try adding mk_add_options MOZ_PARALLEL_BUILD=___ around line 300. Pick a value less than number of cores and free RAM in GB. For example, on a system with 8 cores, 64GB total RAM, but only 6 GB free, the value should be set to 4 or 5.
  • If a few people can confirm this is helpful, I will consider adding it as an additional option.
  • Main resource hog seems to be linking libxul.so. Leave a comment if you have a potential solution.

Having problems? Please provide details: processor make and model, number of cores, free -m, full log in pastebin, whether using AUR helper/makepkg/clean chroot, etc.

How to build with one language (not es-ES) now? Setting the variable $_lang does not solve this.

Hunk #1 succeeded at 5 with fuzz 2.
Appending new data to the end of file: ./browser/locales/en-US/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl
Appending new data to the end of file: ./l10n/es-ES/browser/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl
makeicecat: line 347: ./l10n/es-ES/browser/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl: No such file or directory
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in prepare().
    Aborting...

Note: Option to use prepatched sources has been dropped.

icecatbrowser.org is unofficial, separate from GNU, which is stated at the site itself. classictetris.net is used by the site owner to serve the prepatched sources. They are used only when _build_prepatched=true to save time by skipping the patching step. The default is false.

The site was created to fill the gap after GNU stopped distributing prepatched sources and binaries. As far as I can tell, the makeicecat script is run without any modification, while this PKGBUILD does make some changes. For version 115.8.0, the only differences between the prepatched sources and a fresh patch from this PKGBUILD are:

• services/settings/dumps/monitor/changes – "last_modified" and "collection" entries are different. This is expected because timestamps differ based on when makeicecat is run.

• Some different l10n files (translations). This is also somewhat expected because the latest commit is checked out prior to patching. Exact contents can differ based on when the script is run.

• .hg* files and directories. They are not needed, and this PKGBUILD deletes them.

May I ask what "software.classictetris.net" is?

It seems to be used in the PKGBUILD along with another site "icecatbrowser.org," but neither of these are listed under Sources. A quick search of the GNU foundation's page for Icecat/GNUzilla does not show any connection to either of these sites either: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

PKGBUILD has been updated. Major changes:

• Downloads Firefox ESR and localization using the source array. Files are saved for reuse.
• Saves freshly patched IceCat sources in a tarball for reuse.
• Saves the PGO profile for reuse.

Notes:

• Currently requires clang/llvm 17, which has to be built from AUR.
• Wayland users, consider setting _build_pgo_xvfb=false. This will use xwayland-run for profiling.
• PGO should work now, but if it doesn't and you're willing to go without, try _build_pgo=false.
• Running out of RAM? Try adding mk_add_options MOZ_PARALLEL_BUILD=___ around line 300. Pick a value less than number of cores and free RAM in GB. For example, on a system with 8 cores, 64GB total RAM, but only 6 GB free, the value should be set to 4 or 5.
  • If a few people can confirm this is helpful, I will consider adding it as an additional option.
  • Main resource hog seems to be linking libxul.so. Leave a comment if you have a potential solution.

Having problems? Please provide details: processor make and model, number of cores, free -m, full log in pastebin, whether using AUR helper/makepkg/clean chroot, etc.

@figue The current 115.8.0esr candidate is the same as the 115.8.0esr release version, but in future why should it matter? if the future candidate builds go through successive versions it's just like updating for any other minor commit fix on the upstream

@agapito indeed, thanks. Perhaps we can add a new variable to disable LTO only... But in my case I'm not sure why I'm not capable to build IceCat with LTO (cross) and without PGO, perhaps 16 GB is not enough.

@xiota it seems IceCat code was added to enable candidate builds. I'm not sure if we have to update AUR to a candidate release.

What do you think?

Memory needed to build IceCat depends on number of cores and baseline memory usage. An absolute value, like 16GB or even 64GB, may be sufficient on some systems, but not others. zswap, zram, and tmpfs may reduce the amount of memory available for use during compilation.

@figue Firefox ESR 115.8.0 download link seems to be active now, but I don't see any official release announcement. Download links on the website still redirect to 115.7.0.

Several sed commands in prepare() are no longer needed or relevant.

• _SPEED/_LOCALE settings fail.
• brand.dtd is no longer referenced in makeicecat.
• $(libdir)/$(MOZ_APP_NAME) is the default install path.

PGO is not the problem, LTO is.

Building FF/Icecat with "ac_add_options --enable-lto=cross,full" needs 64G of RAM or 32G + a really big swap partition.

"ac_add_options --enable-lto=cross" needs less memory.

I guess, avoiding LTO is the solution here for people with 16G of memory or less.

For those who have resource issues (code dumps, OOM kill, etc) try this PKGUILD and build IceCat this way:

https://gist.github.com/figue/1bb711434e92fc3d146e49679e77453a

env _build_pgo=false _build_pgo_reuse=false makepkg -sicC

@Rnek0 "Started Process Core Dump" means your computer can't build IceCat with PGO enabled (probably because insufficient memory). I'm testing a new approach with this package.