Firefox 3.5 on Lenny

Firefox 3.5 is out finally again with no amd64 built ready for download. I didn't want to wait to see if someone is going to package it for Debian Lenny So I decided to compile it from source. Surprisingly, the compilation was smooth and the improved version of my favorite web browser was ready in no time.

I needed these packages to install before compiling Firefox for my Lenny setup:

aptitude install make gcc cvs libgtk2.0-dev libxt-dev libidl-dev \
  libzip-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig-dev pkg-config \
  libdbus-1-dev libasound2-dev libnotify-dev autoconf2.13

After downloading and extracting the source from Mozilla website, I created .mozconfig file in the root of source directory containing these options:

mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/obj-@CONFIG_GUESS@
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser
ac_add_options --enable-optimize=-O2
ac_add_options --disable-tests

Then the following commands from the root of source tree will do the magic:

export MOZCONFIG=.mozconfig
./configure
make
make -C browser/installer/

Upon the completion, Firefox 3.5 tarball and accompanying language-pack will be placed in dist directory. The tar file can be extracted anywhere and used without installation.

You can find a comprehensive build documentation at Mozilla Developer Center.

Links:
Build Documentation
Firefox 3.5 Source