Bits for every endianness and a binary for every instruction set
After some trials and tribulations (and lots of Tinderbox hugging), we finally have universal binaries for 1.5.0.2!
I just noticed they’re being uploaded to the wrong location, so I’ll have to fix that, but you can find the mixed-endianess here.
When they move, you can find the builds via the tinderbox-with-the-boring-name (and a “UniversalBinaries” tag), on the 1.8.0 Tinderbox page.
Special shout out to Mento and Josh, who helped us (me) tremendously in getting these builds available.
Truth be told, it took a little longer than it otherwise might have because…
…one of the things I’m working on is documenting and recording the reference platforms for “official” Firefox and Mozilla builds, and this was the first platform/machine that I did this for.
“Reference platforms” is a part of configuration management that the Mozilla project hasn’t really examined closely for its shipped builds.
I’ve noticed this when I ask developers what they think the reference platform is or should be. I often get answers like “Well, we need VC8 and… that’s it” or “It’ll build on Fedora Core 4 or CentOS or RHEL3 or…”
This is an interesting aspect of open source projects in general and Mozilla in particular, in that these are all valid answers if the question is “What platforms should Mozilla build on?”
But in terms of “reference platform,” it doesn’t answer the question. To support, QA, and ship a set of builds, the answer to what a reference platform is includes the operating system version(s), the patches applied to that installation of the operating system, the entire compilation toolchain (compilers, linkers, system libraries, etc.), any patches/extensions/SDKs to the toolchain, and even the tools used to support the build (Perl, CVS, etc.).
All of these must be recorded and archived as necessary as a fundamental requirement of release engineering. It allows the build to, among other things, be reproduced if necessary.
Mark and Josh were very helpful and patient while they (unwittingly) played guinea pig while I figured out all the details that needed to be recorded. Thanks again to them.
As for developers focusing on the other platforms/branches: I’m coming for you.