Verifying the Build ID

Every Mozilla product has a build ID associated with it. This string represents the date and hour of the day the build was made. When a Mozilla Product is released, we need to verify that the product has the right build ID on each platform and for each locale.

Firefox 13 and later

Launch Firefox. Load "about:config" (without the quotes) in the URL bar.

Search for "browser.startup.homepage_override" (without the quotes") in the search bar. It should look like:

• 20120913042009

You can right click on the entry and select "Copy Value".

Firefox 4 to 12

Launch Firefox. Load "about:" (without the quotes) in the URL bar.

Look at the bottom of the window for the Build Identifier. It should look like:

• Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0b7pre) Gecko/20100924 Firefox/4.0b7pre

The Build ID is the 8-digit number immediately after "Gecko/".

Firefox 3.5 and 3.6

Launch Firefox. Load "about:" (without the quotes) in the URL bar.

Look at the bottom of the window for the Build Identifier. It should look like:

• Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1a2pre) Gecko/20080808020649 Minefield/3.1a2pre

The Build ID is the 14-digit number immediately after "Gecko/".

Firefox 2.0 or 3.0

Same as above for Firefox 3.1, only the Build ID will be a 10-digit number immediately after "Gecko/".

Firefox 1.5 and earlier

Windows

Make sure you install the Talkback component. You need to do a manual custom install via the installer to make sure talkback gets installed.

In a DOS window, go to the installation directory (usually c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox or c:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird).

Now cd into extensions\talkback@mozilla.org\components

In your favorite editor (like notepad) open the file called master.ini. Near the top of the file you should see a BuildID string that looks like the following: BuildID = "2005120115"

That's the build ID string.

Mac OS X

In a shell window, go to the directory containing the application package and cd into it (i.e. cd ~/Desktop/Thunderbird.app).

Now cd into Contents/MacOS/extensions/talkback@mozilla.org/components/talkback

In your favorite editor (like vi) open the file called master.ini. Near the top of the file you should see a BuildID string that looks like the following: BuildID = "2005120115"

That's the build ID string.

Linux

Go to the directory you untarred the Mozilla product into.

cd extensions/talkback@mozilla.org/components/talkback

In your favorite editor (like vi) open the file called master.ini. Near the top of the file you should see a BuildID string that looks like the following: BuildID = "2005120113"

That's the build ID string.

Thunderbird 13 and later

Launch Thunderbird. Go to "Help" -> "Troubleshooting information".

In the "Application Basics" section, look at the entry "Application Build ID". It should look like:

• 20120917042011

Thunderbird earlier than 13

The same methods as above can be used, but in order to see the "about:" page you have to set it as your Mail Start Page.

SeaMonkey 2.12 and later

Open the "about:" page. The last line looks like:

• Build identifier: 20120605003015

where the build ID is the 14-digit number at the end

SeaMonkey trunk builds (all versions)

The title of the browser window ends with something like  - SeaMonkey {Build ID: 20120917003010} including the 14-digit build ID.

SeaMonkey (other versions)

Similar methods can be used as for Firefox, depending on the version.

Alternate method (for any version of any Toolkit application)

With MR-Tech Toolkit

1. Install the MR-Tech Toolkit extension. It can be installed in Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, or in SeaMonkey 2.0pre and higher, but:
   • If possible, use a version of the extension compatible with your version of the application. If you are using an older version, you may need to click "View all versions" near the bottom of the page.
   • If you are using a new nightly not yet supported by the latest version of the extension, you may have to override the version compatibility check.
2. Restart the application.
3. You can now copy the Build ID to the clipboard by means of the new "Tools → Copy userAgent / Build ID → Copy Build ID only" menuitem.

With Nightly Tester Tools

1. Install the Nightly Tester Tools extension. Same caveats as for MR-Tech Toolkit above.
2. Restart the application.
3. The menuitems "Tools → Nightly Tester Tools → Insert Build ID into Textbox" (if a text input box has focus) or "Tools → Nightly Tester Tools → Copy Build ID to Clipboard" (otherwise) are now available. What they copy includes the full User-Agent string, the 14-digit (in recent builds) build ID, and the Mercurial changeset. (In SeaMonkey and, I think, in Thunderbird, it is the comm-central, comm-aurora, comm-beta or comm-release changeset, not the one shared with Firefox, which appears in the about:buildconfig page).

Pluses and minuses

• Advantage: This way you get the full build ID, sometimes with a better precision (up to the second in recent builds) than what appears at the bottom of the about: page.
• Disadvantage: (obviously) This requires a third-party extension.

For any build of Firefox, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird or Sunbird which you are about to download from the ftp.mozilla.org server

Next to the *.installer.exe and *.zip (for Windows), *.tar.bz2 (for Linux) and/or *.dmg (for Mac) there is a file with the same name but with a .txt extension instead. This text file includes the build ID as its first line.

For instance, here are the contents of the file http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/latest-comm-aurora/seamonkey-2.14a2.en-US.mac.txt dated 17 September 2012:

20120917013002
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/88b15f553474
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-aurora/rev/10f280f9ff35

It means that the http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/latest-comm-aurora/seamonkey-2.14a2.en-US.mac.dmg of the same date has build ID 20120917013002 (and is built from the mozilla-aurora and comm-aurora changesets shown).