1147384 - Ability to use existing binaries and re-pack with new JS/other non-compiled files

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Chris AtLee [:catlee]]

We could make local development and Try really fast if we didn't require (re)compiling everything for changes to non-compiled files.

I'm imagining something like
# mach build --use-binaries https://.../firefox-nightly-win32.exe

This would download/unpack the specified binaries, and swap in local non-compiled files, and then optionally repack the result.

We could then add try syntax support for this, or allow in-tree manifests to specify binaries to use. Or perhaps the default case could even be to re-use existing nightly binaries if we can determine that all you've changed are .js files in your try patch.

Comment 1

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

For the record, I do something very similar to this with Android Gradle builds.  (This hasn't entirely landed yet.)

./mach configure && make -C objdir export misc chrome && ./mach gradle build

produces an APK with Android built .so libraries downloaded from TBPL.