%general-entities; ]> Thunderbird Thunderbird is a stand-alone mail/news client based on the Mozilla codebase. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to enable it to display and compose HTML emails. &lfs121_checked; Package Information Download (HTTP): Download (FTP): Download MD5 sum: &thunderbird-md5sum; Download size: &thunderbird-size; Estimated disk space required: &thunderbird-buildsize; Estimated build time: &thunderbird-time; Thunderbird Dependencies Required , , , including clang, , (or if you edit the mozconfig; although it is now deprecated by mozilla), (rebuilt with the sqlite module), , and Recommended , , , , , and If you don't install recommended dependencies, then internal copies of those packages will be used. They might be tested to work, but they can be out of date or contain security holes. Optional (runtime), , , and watchman The build process for Thunderbird can use 8GB+ of RAM when linking. Make sure that you have adequate swap or RAM before continuing. The configuration of Thunderbird is accomplished by creating a mozconfig file containing the desired configuration options. A default mozconfig is created below. To see the entire list of available configuration options (and a brief description of each), issue ./mach configure -- --help | less. Create the file with the following command: cat > mozconfig << "EOF" # If you have a multicore machine, all cores will be used. # If you have installed wireless-tools comment out this line: ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi # Uncomment the following option if you have not installed PulseAudio #ac_add_options --enable-audio-backends=alsa # Comment out following options if you have not installed # recommended dependencies: ac_add_options --with-system-libevent ac_add_options --with-system-libvpx ac_add_options --with-system-nspr ac_add_options --with-system-nss ac_add_options --with-system-webp # on some machines. It is supposed to improve startup time and it shrinks # libxul.so by a few MB. With recent Binutils releases the linker already # supports a much safer and generic way for this. ac_add_options --disable-elf-hack export LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs" # The BLFS editors recommend not changing anything below this line: ac_add_options --prefix=/usr ac_add_options --enable-application=comm/mail ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter ac_add_options --disable-updater ac_add_options --disable-debug ac_add_options --disable-debug-symbols ac_add_options --disable-tests # This enables SIMD optimization in the shipped encoding_rs crate. ac_add_options --enable-rust-simd ac_add_options --enable-strip ac_add_options --enable-install-strip # You cannot distribute the binary if you do this. ac_add_options --enable-official-branding ac_add_options --enable-system-ffi ac_add_options --enable-system-pixman ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg ac_add_options --with-system-png ac_add_options --with-system-zlib # Using sandboxed wasm libraries has been moved to all builds instead # of only mozilla automation builds. It requires extra llvm packages # and was reported to seriously slow the build. Disable it. ac_add_options --without-wasm-sandboxed-libraries EOF Adapt the shipped rust-bindgen copy for LLVM-18 and later, and tell cargo we've modified the code of rust-bindgen so the checksum verification of this crate should be skipped: sed -e "/match cursor.kind()/a \ CXCursor_LinkageSpec => return Err(ParseError::Recurse)," \ -i third_party/rust/bindgen/ir/item.rs && cat >> Cargo.toml << EOF && [patch.crates-io.bindgen_0_64_0] package = "bindgen" version = "0.64.0" path = "third_party/rust/bindgen" EOF sed -r '/name = "bindgen"/,+5 s/^source|^checksum/#&/' \ -i Cargo.lock Adapt the WebRTC code to use 64-bit timestamp to fix a build failure with Clang-18 and later: sed 's/uint32_t timestamp/uint64_t timestamp/' \ -i dom/media/gmp-plugin-openh264/gmp-fake-openh264.cpp \ dom/media/gtest/TestGMPRemoveAndDelete.cpp \ dom/media/webrtc/libwebrtcglue/WebrtcGmpVideoCodec.cpp && sed '/mInputImageMap/s/uint32_t/uint64_t/' \ -i dom/media/webrtc/libwebrtcglue/WebrtcGmpVideoCodec.h Now invoke the Python mach script to compile Thunderbird: export MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none && export MOZBUILD_STATE_PATH=./mozbuild && export PYTHON311=/opt/python3.11/bin/python3.11 && $PYTHON311 ./mach build This package does not come with a test suite. Install Thunderbird by running the following commands as the root user: MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none $PYTHON311 ./mach install Empty the environment variables which were set above: unset MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE && unset MOZBUILD_STATE_PATH && unset PYTHON311 MACH_BUILD_PYTHON_NATIVE_PACKAGE_SOURCE=none: Use the system python to create a virtual environment for mach without downloading any python wheels nor using the system python modules. This prevent version mismatches between system modules and bundled ones. ./mach build --verbose: Use this alternative if you need details of which files are being compiled, together with any C or C++ flags being used. ./mach build -jN: The build should, by default, use all the online CPU cores. If using all the cores causes the build to swap because you have insufficient memory, using fewer cores can be faster. CC=gcc CXX=g++: BLFS used to prefer to use gcc and g++ instead of upstream's defaults of the clang programs. With the release of gcc-12 the build takes longer with gcc and g++, primarily because of extra warnings, and is bigger. Set these environment variables before you run the configure script if you wish to continue to use gcc, g++. Building with GCC on i?86 is currently broken. If your Window Manager or Desktop Environment does not allow you to configure a default browser, you can add a configuration parameter to Thunderbird so that a browser will start when you click on an Internet/intranet/local URL. The procedure to check or modify any of the configuration parameters is quite simple and the instructions here can be used to view or modify any of the parameters. First, open the configuration dialog by opening the Edit drop-down menu. Choose Preferences and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. Then, click the Config Editor button. Click on the I accept the risk! button. This will display a list of the configuration preferences and information related to each one. You can use the Filter: bar to enter search criteria and narrow down the listed items. Changing a preference can be done using two methods. One, if the preference has a boolean value (True/False), simply double-click on the preference to toggle the value and two, for other preferences simply right-click on the desired line, choose Modify from the menu and change the value. Creating new preference items is accomplished in the same way, except choose New from the menu and provide the desired data into the fields when prompted. The configuration preference item you need to check so that Thunderbird uses a specified browser is the network.protocol-handler.app.http which should be set to the path of the desired browser, e.g. /usr/bin/firefox. If you use a desktop environment such as GNOME or KDE, a desktop file thunderbird.desktop may be created, in order to include a Thunderbird entry in the menu. Run the following commands as the root user: mkdir -pv /usr/share/{applications,pixmaps} && cat > /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop << "EOF" && [Desktop Entry] Name=Thunderbird Mail Comment=Send and receive mail with Thunderbird GenericName=Mail Client Exec=thunderbird %u Terminal=false Type=Application Icon=thunderbird Categories=Network;Email; MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;x-scheme-handler/mailto; StartupNotify=true EOF ln -sfv /usr/lib/thunderbird/chrome/icons/default/default256.png \ /usr/share/pixmaps/thunderbird.png Installed Program Installed Libraries Installed Directory thunderbird Numerous libraries and modules in the /usr/lib/thunderbird directory /usr/lib/thunderbird Short Descriptions thunderbird is Mozilla's email and newsgroup client thunderbird