971431 - Mach should offer help if prerequisites are not found

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Chris Morgan]

I just built Firefox for the first time. I went through the guide but missed the prerequisites part; in consequence, the build didn't work:

    ~/vc/fx-team$ ./mach build
     0:00.11 /usr/bin/make -f client.mk -s
     0:00.18 /home/chris/vc/fx-team/client.mk:315: *** Could not find autoconf 2.13.  Stop.
     0:00.18 make: *** [build] Error 2
     0:00.23 0 compiler warnings present.

Yes, it stated *what* the problem was, but didn't attempt to *diagnose* the problem. It seems to me likely that in just about every case where a program is missing, the prerequisites not having been installed will be the problem.

Not having seen the prerequisites part of the documentation, I hunted around for a bit, found nothing, and got help in #introduction.

This problem can be eased significantly for new developers; Mach should detect such failures and diagnose the problem with a message like this:

    Did you install all the prerequisites? If not, check https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Developer_Guide/Build_Instructions#Build_prerequisites

Comment 1

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

Yes, we should do something better.

glandium: do you think we should install an "on failed handler" in configure or would you prefer to have mach detect the failure as happening inside configure?

Comment 2

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

That particular one is not even in configure. It's *before* configure.