Is it possible to compile Firefox for Windows on Linux?

[Alex]

Just wondering if it's possible? I've managed to get up to getting to
the wget command interface and starting the build but then getting
wrong version of Windows support error (which I got the first time I
tried to compile Firefox on Windows, but was sorted out by installing
the correct Windows 7 SDK, which I don't think is possible on Linux?)

[Benjamin Smedberg]

What problem are you trying to solve?

This build configuration is highly nonstandard and is not recommended.
There are two possible ways to do it, both of which have problems:

1) cross-compile to Windows using GCC toolchains. This configuration
often has problems where we include windows headers which aren't part of
w32api, and then people try to #ifdef those features. The build that
would be produced in this configuration doesn't match
feature-for-feature with standard Firefox and is mainly a research item.

2) compile on Linux using WINE and the native MSVC toolchain and SDKs.
I've heard that this is possible, but I'm not sure how you'd actually do
it or whether the MSVC and SDK licenses actually permit it (you may have
to install them on Windows and then access them via a shared network
drive). This is also a weird configuration that really doesn't have much
benefit. You'd probably be just as well off using a Windows virtual machine.

--BDS

[Alex]

I used method #1, but it had its issues with wrong version of Windows
supported. The reason I asked was to compile Firefox with the SSE3
instruction set. With SSE2 enabled, I saw improvements in HTML5
applications, such as 3D rendering and canvas rendering. Large images
also loaded faster. Since SSE3 was an improvement over SSE2 I was
hoping to see similar gains. Unfortunately MS decided not to include
further SSE support in the MSVC. There is the Intel C++ compiler, but
it hinders performance on AMD systems so I'd rather not use it.

[Benjamin Smedberg]

On 9/22/2011 12:48 PM, Alex wrote:
> I used method #1, but it had its issues with wrong version of Windows
> supported. The reason I asked was to compile Firefox with the SSE3
> instruction set. With SSE2 enabled, I saw improvements in HTML5
> applications, such as 3D rendering and canvas rendering. Large images
> also loaded faster. Since SSE3 was an improvement over SSE2 I was
> hoping to see similar gains. Unfortunately MS decided not to incl

MSVC produces significantly smaller and faster code than GCC. Any
improvements you'd get from SSE3 instructions would likely be offset by
generally bad code generation. I doubt that this project is worth the
investment.

--BDS

[Alex]

I see that now, thank you very much for your help :)