Thunderbird-115.5.1

Installation of Thunderbird

Note

The build process for Thunderbird can use 8GB+ of RAM when linking. Make sure that you have adequate swap or RAM before continuing.

The building system ships several internal copies of the Python 3 modules setuptools and six.py. The shipped copies are too old to work well with Python 3.12 or later. Replace them with the symlinks to the LFS setuptools package and six-1.16.0 already installed on the system, and adapt the building system for these updated Python modules. We also need to rewrite the code based on the imp module removed in Python 3.12 and later using the importlib module:

(for i in $(find -name six.py); do
   ln -sfv /usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/six.py $i
   [ $? = 0 ] || exit $?
 done) &&

sed '/ConfigParser/s/Safe//'                          \
    -i testing/mozbase/mozprofile/mozprofile/prefs.py &&

(for i in setuptools distutils-precedence.pth  \
          pkg_resources _distutils_hack; do
   rm -rf third_party/python/setuptools/$i     &&
   ln -sv /usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/$i \
          third_party/python/setuptools
   [ $? = 0 ] || exit $?
 done) &&

sed 's/distutils/setuptools._&/'            \
    -i python/mozbuild/mozbuild/nodeutil.py &&

sed -e '/^import/s/imp$/importlib.util/'             \
    -e 's/imp.new_module/__import__/'                \
    -e "s/imp.load_source\(.*\)/spec =               \
        importlib.util.spec_from_file_location\1;    \
        mod = importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec); \
        spec.loader.exec_module(mod)/" -i python/mach/mach/main.py &&
sed '/import imp/d' -i netwerk/dns/prepare_tlds.py

The configuration of Thunderbird is accomplished by creating a mozconfig file containing the desired configuration options. A default mozconfig is created below. To see the entire list of available configuration options (and a brief description of each), issue ./mach configure -- --help | less. Create the file with the following command:

cat > mozconfig << "EOF"
# If you have a multicore machine, all cores will be used.

# If you have installed wireless-tools comment out this line:
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi

# Uncomment the following option if you have not installed PulseAudio
#ac_add_options --enable-audio-backends=alsa

# Comment out following options if you have not installed
# recommended dependencies:
ac_add_options --with-system-libevent
ac_add_options --with-system-libvpx
ac_add_options --with-system-nspr
ac_add_options --with-system-nss
ac_add_options --with-system-webp

# on some machines. It is supposed to improve startup time and it shrinks
# libxul.so by a few MB.  With recent Binutils releases the linker already
# supports a much safer and generic way for this.
ac_add_options --disable-elf-hack
export LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs"

# The BLFS editors recommend not changing anything below this line:
ac_add_options --prefix=/usr
ac_add_options --enable-application=comm/mail

ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-updater
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-debug-symbols
ac_add_options --disable-tests

# This enables SIMD optimization in the shipped encoding_rs crate.
ac_add_options --enable-rust-simd

ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-install-strip

# You cannot distribute the binary if you do this.
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding

ac_add_options --enable-system-ffi
ac_add_options --enable-system-pixman

ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg
ac_add_options --with-system-png
ac_add_options --with-system-zlib

# Using sandboxed wasm libraries has been moved to all builds instead
# of only mozilla automation builds. It requires extra llvm packages
# and was reported to seriously slow the build. Disable it.
ac_add_options --without-wasm-sandboxed-libraries
EOF

Now invoke the Python mach script to compile Thunderbird:

Note

If you are compiling this package in chroot you must ensure that /dev/shm is mounted. If you do not do this, the Python configuration will fail with a traceback report referencing /usr/lib/pythonN.N/multiprocessing/synchronize.py. As the root user, run:

mountpoint -q /dev/shm || mount -t tmpfs devshm /dev/shm

export MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none &&
export MOZBUILD_STATE_PATH=./mozbuild               &&
./mach configure                                    &&
./mach build

This package does not come with a test suite.

Install Thunderbird by running the following commands as the root user:

MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none ./mach install

Empty the environment variables which were set above:

unset MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE MOZBUILD_STATE_PATH