Wednesday 24 August 2011

Upcoming changes to mozconfig detection

I just checked in a patch to build-system which changes our mozconfig detection logic. Specifically:
  • If you want to specify an explicit mozconfig, the only way to do that now is to set the MOZCONFIG environment variable. We used to support the obscure MOZ_MYCONFIG variable too, but we now error out if it is set. Note that if MOZCONFIG is a relative path, it will be treated as relative to the current directory. (update: apologies, this is still broken).
  • More significantly, we used to support a number of implicit mozconfig locations other than the usual <srcdir>/.mozconfig, such as $HOME/.mozconfig and a couple of variants. This went against build system's policy to be as explicit as possible, so these locations are no longer supported, and if we used to pick up a mozconfig there we will now error out. The only implicit location still supported is the usual <srcdir>/.mozconfig.
This patch should make it into mozilla-central soon, well in time for Gecko 9. This patch will also affect comm-central in the same way

    7 comments:

    Neil Rashbrook said...

    I used to use one of those locations! Nowadays I hack the script to find .mozconfig in my objdir instead, which is a much more sensible place to put it.

    jesup said...

    Yeah, but objdir itself is the result of .mozconfig (at least in mine)

    So my 11-year-old $HOME/.mozconfig will be broken? Awww.

    Tony Mechelynck said...

    What about /mozconfig (without the leading dot in mozconfig)? Still supported or not?.

    Tony Mechelynck said...

    oops... %srcdir%/mozconfig. That silly blog ate my angle-bracketed srcdir.

    Sid said...

    Tony: no, though there have been multiple requests to add it back.

    Jeff Walden said...

    Count me as another request for $srcdir/mozconfig. (I'll try to find the relevant bug and somehow or other express this there.) It's not that I mind $srcdir/.mozconfig overmuch, it's that I like being able to see the mozconfig file in directory listings and such.

    Jeff Walden said...

    I filed bug 684782 with a patch.