Package Details: icecat 115.10.0-1

Git Clone URL: https://aur.archlinux.org/icecat.git (read-only, click to copy)
Package Base: icecat
Description: GNU version of the Firefox ESR browser
Upstream URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git
Keywords: browser esr gnuzilla web
Licenses: MPL-2.0
Submitter: None
Maintainer: figue (xiota)
Last Packager: xiota
Votes: 251
Popularity: 0.96
First Submitted: 2007-12-09 10:12 (UTC)
Last Updated: 2024-04-29 09:15 (UTC)

Dependencies (51)

Sources (3)

Pinned Comments

xiota commented on 2024-02-27 10:57 (UTC) (edited on 2024-02-27 10:59 (UTC) by xiota)

icecatbrowser.org is unofficial, separate from GNU, which is stated at the site itself. classictetris.net is used by the site owner to serve the prepatched sources. They are used only when _build_prepatched=true to save time by skipping the patching step. The default is false.

The site was created to fill the gap after GNU stopped distributing prepatched sources and binaries. As far as I can tell, the makeicecat script is run without any modification, while this PKGBUILD does make some changes. For version 115.8.0, the only differences between the prepatched sources and a fresh patch from this PKGBUILD are:

  • services/settings/dumps/monitor/changes – "last_modified" and "collection" entries are different. This is expected because timestamps differ based on when makeicecat is run.

  • Some different l10n files (translations). This is also somewhat expected because the latest commit is checked out prior to patching. Exact contents can differ based on when the script is run.

  • .hg* files and directories. They are not needed, and this PKGBUILD deletes them.

xiota commented on 2024-02-26 07:32 (UTC) (edited on 2024-03-13 20:04 (UTC) by xiota)

PKGBUILD has been updated. Major changes:

  • Downloads Firefox ESR and localization using the source array. Files are saved for reuse.
  • Saves freshly patched IceCat sources in a tarball for reuse.
  • Saves the PGO profile for reuse.

Test builds can be expedited by:

  • Using prepatched sources by setting _build_prepatched=true
  • Using a premade profile.

Notes:

  • Wayland users, consider setting _build_pgo_xvfb=false. This will use xwayland-run for profiling.
  • PGO should work now, but if it doesn't and you're willing to go without, try _build_pgo=false.
  • Running out of RAM? Try adding mk_add_options MOZ_PARALLEL_BUILD=___ around line 300. Pick a value less than number of cores and free RAM in GB. For example, on a system with 8 cores, 64GB total RAM, but only 6 GB free, the value should be set to 4 or 5.
    • If a few people can confirm this is helpful, I will consider adding it as an additional option.

Having problems? Please provide details: processor make and model, number of cores, free -m, full log in pastebin, whether using AUR helper/makepkg/clean chroot, etc.

Latest Comments

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xiota commented on 2024-02-12 14:01 (UTC) (edited on 2024-02-12 14:06 (UTC) by xiota)

@Ningen

allocate large swap file like in my previous comment

Not appropriate to change system parameters like that inside of PKGBUILDs.

mk_add_options MOZ_PARALLEL_BUILD=4

Not needed. mach sets an appropriate value based on available cores.

ac_add_options MOZ_PGO=1

Not suitable for PKGBUILDs because doesn't work in clean chroot.

PGO makes building almost 3-5x longer

That is normal. PGO has three stages:

  1. Instrumented build.
  2. Profiling.
  3. Optimized build.

The PKGBUILD has been constructed to save the profile to reduce time for subsequent rebuilds by skipping to the last step.

Ningen commented on 2024-02-12 13:47 (UTC)

@xiota Yes I am using that option right now compiling on my more powerful pc, however looking at the memory requirements it's most likely still going to be going over any normal laptop memory + swap space, so in that case I think it's actually better to just leave as ac_add_options --enable-lto=full actually and just allocate large swap file like in my previous comment.

I am going to be trying two different PKGBUILDS to see if I notice any improvements, because currently even on a good pc PGO makes building almost 3-5x longer. Namely, I was browsing the mozilla build docs and found that the option mk_add_options MOZ_PARALLEL_BUILD=4 could be used but isn't in the PKGBUILD, also, they don't really specify much about PGO on the docs so I am going to just try remove a large portion of the build() section replaced with the option ac_add_options MOZ_PGO=1 as they specify on the docs, not sure if it will work though

Ningen commented on 2024-02-12 10:36 (UTC)

Tried to build on my laptop with ~30GB of ram and it just failed before compiling toolkit/library/build/libxul.so which were one of the last few components, very annoying. Retrying build with ~50GB ram on a more powerful computer.

@texer22 In the PKGBUILD on line 85 change if [ "${_only-compile}q" = q ]; then to if [ 1 ]; then. I would also not recommend building until someone figures out whether the PGO build really requires a lot of ram or there is an issue somewhere

texer22 commented on 2024-02-12 09:58 (UTC) (edited on 2024-02-12 09:58 (UTC) by texer22)

Cannot build...


==> Starting build()...
/home/user/.cache/paru/clone/icecat/PKGBUILD: line 195: cd: gnuzilla-dbe6da400cf4f28e5e893d0acb5022e23cf3afcf/output/icecat-115.7.0: No such file or directory
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...

Ningen commented on 2024-02-12 05:20 (UTC)

@figue You're right it seems to be much more resource intensive than before PGO, I can't compile natively with 8GB ram and 8GiB swap space. That said, perhaps the only option is to make a very large swap file and use that temporarily for compile time such as https://files.catbox.moe/56bafh.sh I included this as the first line under prepare() before cd gnuzilla-${_commit}, running it now and will let you know how it goes...

figue commented on 2024-02-11 15:25 (UTC) (edited on 2024-02-11 15:25 (UTC) by figue)

@xiota thank you for your PKGBUILD. I've merged a few things.

@Ningen 115.7.0 pushed

Ningen commented on 2024-02-11 09:14 (UTC)

@figue Ohh I see. Would you mind pushing the PKGBUILD for 115.7.0 anyway and I will see if I can compile?

I have currently tried your PKGBUILD here https://gist.github.com/figue/4a407a15e0eedfc2e88eb5de431b69f7 but there are weird things going on outside of your mentioned issue, so I would like to just try to build the regular way if you can push the updates and investigate

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