Category Archives: mozilla

smartmake redux: harder, better, faster, stronger

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Josh Matthews

Do you get frustrated about how long it takes to build Firefox after you’ve only made a small change to a single file? Have you heard the words “incremental build”, or tried to only build one or two directories but … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla, projects | 4 Comments

Answering questions by looking at code

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Josh Matthews

A contributor recently asked a question in #introduction that I couldn’t answer immediately, but I suspected that I could find the answer without too much work. I also decided to write down the steps I took and the reasons I … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla | 1 Comment

A Firefox regression hunter VM!

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Josh Matthews

I am happy to announce the first public unveiling of my Fox in a Box project. The enthusiasm for my idea of putting together a dev VM was loud and clear in my last post, mainly from testers who expressed … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla, projects | 3 Comments

A spoonful of sugar helps the .mozconfig go down

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Josh Matthews

In my work with new Mozilla contributors, I’ve seen a number of people get hung up on the whole .mozconfig voodoo madness. Yes, we made it possible to download the source and build it without having to even think about … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla | 2 Comments

Making bugs more attractive for other people to fix

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Josh Matthews

There are two takeaway points that I would like to state up front: when you find a bug that’s well-scoped and you have a fairly clear idea of how to fix it, add [mentor=yournickname] to the whiteboard. when stating that … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla | 3 Comments

Two years he walks the earth

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Josh Matthews

Two years ago today I sent an email to Benjamin Smedberg saying that I wanted to help out with Electrolysis. I regret nothing except how quickly the intervening time has passed. Bring on two more years!

Posted in mozilla | 1 Comment

The Fast and the Furious: bzexport

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Josh Matthews

If you’re a bzexport user, you’ll want to pull the latest revision. It’s recently been getting slower due to the number of http requests that need to be made (the tradeoff here is that it’s also been getting more correct), … Continue reading →

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nsCOMPtr has never been so pretty

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Josh Matthews

Jim Blandy announced his archer-mozilla pretty-printers for Spidermonkey late last year. I’ve used them a few times while working on some JS proxy bugs, and I’ve found them to be invaluable. So invaluable, in fact, that I’ve written a bunch … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla, projects | 3 Comments

Self-serve tools: now more likely to work

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Josh Matthews

If you’ve given my self-serve tools a try (in particular, cancel.py) and had it claim that it couldn’t authorize you, it’s time to give it another shot. Steven Fink, being the wonderful person he is, dove in and found some … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla | 1 Comment

Build smarter, not harder

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Josh Matthews

I spent the past six weeks roaming around Europe with a netbook, and used that time productively to get some work done on Firefox. Part of that involved building on Windows for the first time, and experiencing the joy of … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla | 6 Comments