1160751 - Failed to build Thunderbird from sourcecode - my first time building

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[Pavel Černý]

Attachment: log.txt

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0
Build ID: 20150125221831

Steps to reproduce:

I followed this guide https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Simple_Thunderbird_build

I downloaded the source code
> hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central
> cd comm-central
> python client.py checkout

added to .mozconfing in comm-central directory following line
> ac_add_options --enable-application=mail

checked the treeherder https://treeherder.mozilla.org/ui/#/jobs?repo=comm-central and found a suitable revision with green "B" for Linux x64 opt. And switched to it.
>hg checkout 94adb5945ec3

Then run
> ./mozilla/mach build

The build failed. 
I wondered why and asked for help here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641527#c23
I got two pieces of advice - first was to switch also to the corresponding revision of mozilla-central and second to use comm-beta since it is more stable.

I checked the treeherder https://treeherder.mozilla.org/ui/#/jobs?repo=comm-beta and found a suitable revision with green "B" for Linux x64 opt. (I am on Ubuntu 14.10 x64) Found the corresponding mozilla revision.

I added mozilla-beta to ./hg/hgrc and mozilla-release to ./mozila/hg/hgrc
I switched to the chosen revisions:
> python client.py --comm-repo=beta  --comm-rev=806ef4a716b6 --mozilla-repo=release --mozilla-rev=f743fa7d9b84 checkout

Then run
> ./mozilla/mach build


Actual results:

The build failed again. Why? On three hereder was green B, X and Z even for other operating systems. See the attached log.


Expected results:

Btw I wonder what does the B, X and Z on treeherder means. B is for build, but what is the rest for? Is it enough to correctly build it on my computer when there is only green B followed by for example yellow X and red Z?

I spent many hours trying to get the source code and build it in order to try fixing my first bug. And I found the tutorial mentioned earlier https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Simple_Thunderbird_build not specific enough. So I would like to improve this tutorial to more reflect the beginner's point of view.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

15:17.45 make[4]: *** No rule to make target '/home/pavel/comm-central/mozilla/media/libvpx/vp9/decoder/vp9_thread.c', needed by 'vp9_thread.o'.  Stop.
15:17.45 /home/pavel/comm-central/mozilla/config/recurse.mk:74: recipe for target 'media/libvpx/target' failed

Try ./mach clobber && ./mach build.

Comment 2

[Pavel Černý]

It works, I successfully built. Thanks Magnus.

But still, can you, please, explain me, what does the X(XPCShell) and Z(Mozmill) on treeherder stands for? And are they important to be also green (as "B" is) to successfully build the code and develop patches? (The tutorial mentions only to verify Bs to be green.)

I would like to put it to the tutorial mentioned earlier. So the entry to the project for other greenhorns will be less confusing :)

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

For reference, a "clobber" basically means you remove all exising build artifacts from a previous build (attempt).

XPCShell is one kind of automated test, mozmill another, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_MozMill_Testing and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MailNews_xpcshell-tests

 (For more on letters, see https://treeherder.mozilla.org/help.html)

For building it's not important that other than B is greeen (= it builds). The automated tests are run on all checkins, and if it's not green one or more tests failed. Unfortunately tests can fail due to test bugs, infra failures etc too, so it's not *necessarily* something wrong. Also for comm-central, there is almost constantly some test bustage due to changes in mozilla-central that haven't been adapted yet.

Great to hear you'll add needed notes to the wiki!