Boot to Gecko (B2G)

Boot to Gecko aims to create a complete, standalone operating system for the open web.

You can read more about B2G here:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G

follow us on twitter: @Boot2Gecko

http://twitter.com/Boot2Gecko

join the Mozilla Platform mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform

and talk to us on IRC:

#B2G on irc.mozilla.org

Prerequisites

Linux

• A 64 bit linux distro
  • See http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html on configuring USB access.
• 20GB of free disk space
• autoconf-2.13
• git
• ccache
• gcc/g++ 4.6.3 or older
• bison
• flex
• 32bit ncurses
• 32bit zlib
• make

Additionally, if you're building the emulator, you probably need the the Mesa implementation of OpenGL. On Ubuntu, this is the libgl1-mesa-dev package.

Ubuntu 12.10 ships with gcc 4.7 by default, which causes build errors pretty early in the process. To use gcc 4.6, edit .userconfig and add

export CC=gcc-4.6
export CXX=g++-4.6

Of course, you'll need the g++-4.6 package installed.

OSX

• XCode
• 20GB of free space
• homebrew
  • git (if not using XCode 4)
  • gpg
  • ccache
  • autoconf-2.13 - brew install https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-versions/master/autoconf213.rb

Note: Some B2G subrepositories contain files whose names differ only in case. Amazingly, the build seems to work properly on OSX case-insensitive file systems, despite this. But if you do |./repo status|, you'll see lots of spurrious "modified files" corresponding to these pairs of files whose names differ only in case. Try not to worry about it.

Configure

Run config.sh to get a list of supported devices:

./config.sh

And then run config.sh for the device you want to build for:

./config.sh [device name]

Udev Permissions

If you get "error: insufficient permissions for device"...

Obtain ID of device manufacturer (first 4 hexidecimal digits before colon):

$ lsusb

Add a line to /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules (replacing XXXX with 4 digit ID):

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="XXXX", MODE="0666"

Restart udev before re-plugging your device for it to be detected:

$ sudo service udev restart

Re-run configure:

./config.sh [device name]

Building against a custom Gecko

It can sometimes be useful to build against a different Gecko than the one specified in the manifest, e.g. a mozilla-central checkout that has some patches applied. To do so, edit .userconfig:

GECKO_PATH=/path/to/mozilla-central
GECKO_OBJDIR=/path/to/mozilla-central/objdir-gonk

Note that if you switch your userconfig's gecko path, you need to rm -rf the objdir and rebuild.

Build

Run build.sh or bld.sh to build B2G.

./build.sh

If you want to just build gecko or some other project, just specify it:

./build.sh gecko

Flash/Install

Make sure your phone is plugged in with usb debugging enabled.

To flash everything on your phone:

./flash.sh

To flash system/userdata/boot partitions on fastboot phones:

./flash.sh system
./flash.sh boot
./flash.sh user

To update gecko:

./flash.sh gecko

To update gaia:

./flash.sh gaia

Update Repos

To update all repos:

git pull
./repo sync

To update a specific repo (eg, gaia):

./repo sync gaia

Debug

To restart B2G and run B2G under gdb:

./run-gdb.sh

To attach gdb to a running B2G process:

./run-gdb.sh attach

Test

To run the Marionette test suite on the emulator:

./test.sh

To run specific tests (individual files, directories, or ini files):

./test.sh gecko/dom/sms gecko/dom/battery/test/marionette/test_battery.py

Specify the full path if you're using a different Gecko repo:

./test.sh /path/to/mozilla-central/dom/battery/test/marionette/test_battery.py