Monday, June 30, 2008

Easy Firefox Windows compile

I wish there were a simple package for Windows with all the build tools and source code to compile Firefox. Everyone should compile their web browser, as it is these days the most important application you interact with. Being easily able to compile and recompile encourages tinkering, so millions of people improving it. It should also incorporate a patch-generation or distributed version-control tool, perhaps like Debian's Quilt or maybe Git, so people can share their patches. Having the product open-source with a license permitting people to modify is only a first step; the next steps are to have an ecosystem that encourages people to modify the product and to have the product itself be a Design for Modifiability.

Also, Assuming the build tools are good enough, there is performance benefit for compiling for the exact model of your CPU rather than a generic precompiled binary. One might even do profile-directed optimization based on the websites you visit.

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