Education/FAQ

Learning Mozilla

Where can I find Mozilla source code?

Mozilla source code can be searched and browsed using the Mozilla Cross-Reference (MXR) and the Mercurial Web interface (hgweb). You can obtain the latest source code using Mercurial.

How do I build Firefox, Thunderbird or another Mozilla project?

See the Mozilla Developer Centre's Build Documentation.

Communicating with Mozilla

What is IRC and how do I use it to talk to the Mozilla community?

IRC is the Internet Chat Relay system, a real-time chat protocol used by Mozilla to connect developers around the world. See the Mozilla IRC Guide.

Mozilla has a lot of websites. How do I know where to look for things?

Mozilla uses many different sites to organize its communities and projects. Here are some recommendations for where to look for things as you start:

• http://developer.mozilla.org - Documentation and reference material suitable for developers.
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org - Mozilla's bugzilla database, an issue tracking system.
• http://addons.mozilla.org - The central repository of Firefox and Thunderbird extensions, themes, and addons.
• http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/Firefox/ - Tinderbox is a web-based dashboard showing the current state of the source code as it gets built by Mozilla's automated build systems.
• http://wiki.mozilla.org - A catch-all place for Mozilla status notes, planning documents, development roadmaps, and other miscellaneous documents

Mozilla Code

A lot of people use const Ci = Components.interfaces; Ci.nsISomeInterface. Why?

Using the Ci constant is faster because .interfaces has to go through XPConnect, slowing it down.

When I run my debug build on Windows, I get a lot of pop-ups for assertions. How can I stop this?

Before you run your build, set the following environment variable:

export XPCOM_DEBUG_BREAK=warn