305963 - 1.8 Branch Binary Bits Are Too Big

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Build Config, defect)

Description

[Scott MacGregor]

The release machine for windows branch builds is generating a thunderbird.exe
that is 300k bigger than the trunk. 

I went back in time to the day we branched and found that when both the trunk
and the branch were the same bits, that the release machine for the branch was
still making a binary that was 300K larger than it should be.

Comment 1

[Scott MacGregor]

This is a 1.1 bug.

Comment 2

[Scott MacGregor]

I started comparing the individual library sizes for each library generated by
the two builds in dist\bin\lib.

I discovered that gklayout.lib was the trouble maker.

It turns out the branch is building some gecko extension called MATHML which is
adding the bloat...

Comment 3

[Scott MacGregor]

--disable-mathml is still set in mail\config\mozconfig for the branch, it must
be getting defined somewhere in the build scripts by accident. And my own
private 1.5 builds don't build mathml, so it must be getting defined by accident
by something in the branch build scripts.

Comment 4

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Is MathML part of our web experience or not? I hate to see it disabled in
Thunderbird but enabled in a complementary Firefox at such little price
(probably a lot less than 300k when 7zipped).

Comment 5

[Scott MacGregor]

Chase tracked down the problem area.

The tinderbox machine on the trunk sources mail\config\mozconfig in its default
mozconfig file:

. $topsrcdir/mail/config/mozconfig

ac_add_options --enable-update-channel=nightly
etc.etc.

This source line is commented out on the branch build mozconfig to try to
optimize the build scripts so the branch didn't have to check out
mail\config\mozconfig before building. 

# . $topsrcdir/mail/config/mozconfig

ac_add_options --enable-update-channel=nightly
etc. etc.

This is why the branch build is missing a lot of our Thunderbird build options,
most notably causing us to start building unwanted mathml stuff!

Comment 6

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

Thunderbird can fetch web content, and the Gecko rv: in its user agent will
match other products from the same aviary or Mozilla milestone branch, so it
should not start throwing out Gecko features.  What's the real objection here,
download size (which as bsmedberg suggests is a lot less than 300k with
compression) or inflated code size?

/be

Comment 7

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> This is why the branch build is missing a lot of our Thunderbird build options,
> most notably causing us to start building unwanted mathml stuff!

So I didn't read mscott's comment after responding to bsmedberg's.

Here's my thing: we want the rv: 1.8 substring in the comment in the user-agent
to mean a certain set of web features.  If Thunderbird's UA is distinct enough,
then I'm happy.  If we believe its rv: should differ from Firefox's on account
of SVG and MathML being disabled in Thunderbird, then how would we distinguish
rv: best?

/be

Comment 8

[Scott MacGregor]

I fixed the build machine so tomorrow's bits should be back to being the same
size as the trunk builds. 

I'll close this out but we should still think about Brendan's comments about the
user agent rv.

Comment 9

[Scott MacGregor]

I created Bug 306128 for the user agent discussion.