1167201 - Automated tests silently fail when gconf2-devel is not present on a linux system.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

If a linux system doesn't have the gconf2 -devel package, the build will silently disable gconf2.

This has the side effect of breaking a shit-ton of tests, because our typical check for "are we running on Linux" is:

  let isLinux = ("@mozilla.org/gnome-gconf-service;1" in Cc);

The patch I will attach here will make the lack of gconf2-devel a fatal error by default: builders can still --disable-gconf, and in that case configure will issue a warning about failing tests.

Comment 1

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Yeah, we definitely shouldn't disable functionality silently. As to the isLinux thing, we should fix bug 1150818 and let tests use mozinfo instead of horrible checks like that. :-/

Comment 2

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: 1167201-gconf-configure

Comment 3

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #0)
>   let isLinux = ("@mozilla.org/gnome-gconf-service;1" in Cc);

That's interesting, because that's not what the typical check looked like a while ago iirc. But why not fix that instead? 
@mozilla.org/gio-service;1 would be a better one, as it's always there.

Comment 4

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Specifically, even if you do build with --enable-gconf, you can still not have the gconf service at run time.

Comment 5

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

Comment on attachment 8608818 [details] [diff] [review]
1167201-gconf-configure

Review of attachment 8608818 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: configure.in
@@ +4780,4 @@
>              then
>                  AC_MSG_ERROR([* * * Could not find gconf-2.0 ])
> +            else
> +                AC_MSG_WARN([Many automated tests will fail with --disable-gconf. See bug 1167201.])

I don't think this message is very useful, but meh.

Anyways, I do agree that auto-disable is not good, and we should remove them when we see one, but cf. my previous comments, those broken test checks should be fixed independently of that.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/220f2f70adc9

Comment 7

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Filed bug 1167627 for really fixing isLinux.

Comment 8

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/220f2f70adc9

Comment 9

[Andrew Halberstadt [:ahal]]

This broke builds for me on Fedora 21:
0:12.38 configure: error: * * * Could not find gconf-2.0

Fix is easy:
sudo yum install GConf2-devel

But this should at least get added to the MDN build prerequisites and |mach bootstrap|.

Comment 10

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Can I ask you to fix the build docs? I'm not sure which ones exist nowadays.

I've filed bug 1168861 for the bootstrap fixup, which should be easy.

Comment 11

[Andrew Halberstadt [:ahal]]

Sure, I added it to the Red Hat/Fedora section of:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Linux_Prerequisites

Is this likely to affect other distros? I'm not sure what package is (may be) needed elsewhere.

Comment 12

[Shian-Yow Wu [:swu]]

Yes, I also encountered the "Could not find gconf-2.0" error message when building Firefox OS on Ubuntu 14.04.

It can be fixed by:
sudo apt-get install libgconf2-dev

Comment 13

[Shian-Yow Wu [:swu]]

Added libgconf2-dev to Ubuntu section for Firefox and Firefox OS at:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Linux_Prerequisites
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Firefox_OS_build_prerequisites

Comment 14

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

How does one build FF on Fedora22 then? It doesn't have Gconf2-devel

Comment 15

[Benjamin Smedberg]

What does it have instead?

You can --disable-gconf but that will run into the original problem of tests failing and other weirdness.

Comment 16

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

(In reply to Olli Pettay [:smaug] from comment #14)
> How does one build FF on Fedora22 then? It doesn't have Gconf2-devel

| sudo dnf install Gconf2-devel | works for me on a newly installed Fedora 22 Workstation installation.

Comment 17

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

Sorry for the extra bugspam, that should be | sudo dnf install GConf2-devel | (it's apparently case-sensitive, so big 'C' is needed).