1833942 - Add reference to "Mercurial Bundles" document in getting started docs

Status: NEW

(Developer Infrastructure :: Firefox Source Docs: Content, task, P3)

Description

[Tim Giles [:tgiles]]

Using Mercurial bundles is probably the better approach for contributors with slow internet connections. We've had multiple folks spend hours trying to download the source code only for the connection to time out and lose all that progress.

We should update the following documents with a reference to the Mercurial bundles doc:

• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contribution_quickref.html#firefox-contributors-quick-reference
• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/windows_build.html
• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/macos_build.html
• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/linux_build.html

with something under the "Bootstrap a copy of the Firefox source code" heading. Maybe something like "If you have a slower internet connection, you may want to download the source code using Mercurial bundles since there is a possibility of your connection timing out which means the repository won't be downloaded". I'm sure there's a better way to get that idea across so feel free to write something that explains the situation better 🙂

Comment 1

[Tim Giles [:tgiles]]

Oh, we should also make a note that importing all this history can take a very long time to set expectations in these sections as well. Most repos new contributors are used to are not anywhere as large as Firefox.