Firefox 45 ESR Beta 8 for OS/2 released

The time of waiting is over because the first public Firefox 45 ESR for OS/2 is now available as a zip package. About the issues with the rpm package check the previous post.

Firefox 45.5.0 ESR Beta 8 for OS/2

Changes in this release

• link against external LIBJPEG, LIBPNG, ZLIB, BZIP2 and HUNSPELL DLLs
• use kLIBC 0.6.6 DLL directly in JS code
• Link against LIBCx DLL for automatic EXCEPTQ trap report creation
  everywhere

Issues

• web page scrolling, entering text in input fields and tab change are delayed/slow

Other stuff
This release not only needs more external libs/dlls (for image format and such)
but also core dlls that were part of the Firefox package – security lib (NSS). You will easily see this change because the Firefox root dir is now nearly empty. If this is a wise move especially when there are now regressions like Firefox isn’t working correctly because of these external libs.
In 2016 there was a change to support again native printers (GPI)(#155, #75, #134) and not only CUPS based printer.

downloads
Firefox 45 ESR for OS/2 (zip) size 53MB

requirements
Firefox needs tons of external libs now, we try to list as many of them here or you can try to use the yum/rpm way.

Firefox 45 ESR Alpha: first steps done

In April the OS/2 port made some progress to get the first Alpha build of Firefox 45 ESR running:

Firefox ESR 45.5.0 for OS/2 Alpha

Some notes about the latest patches and comments:

• the off-main-thread-composition (OMTC) code path currently does not work and the feature is disabled for now
• adapt the new fontlist code, changes over the fontlist pango code in 38ESR
• fix problems because of symlinks in the profile dir
• disable plugin-container.exe to fix the 100% CPU load after it get’s called
• future GL support on OS/2 for Firefox based on the ancient OS/2 port of Mesa (software based rendering only)
• future WebTRC support, needs better USB support (drivers) and the port of the webtrc code in Firefox

The have been some updates to external base dll required for Firefox to run. There is a new issue with the rpm build because of python issues. There’s also a plan to create a new launcher that will call the firefox.exe from a fixed path in the /usr directory tree, fortunately there will be a non rpm release (zip release) that will ship with a standard firefox.exe that can load its dlls from the Firefox root dir and the firefox dir itself can be on any drive and in any dir you like. There is also a plan to make the zip release available before the rpm install issue get’s fixed.

Mozilla’s Firefox Future

Mozilla Research is actively working on the servo browser engine for its next gen browser “project quantum”. Servo is written in Mozilla’s new system language Rust that has some advantages like memory handling, code safety and better performance. Servos aim is to take advantage of the current hardware, that is both the CPU and the graphics for again better performance. Mozilla is now adding parts of the servo project written in Rust to the current Gecko code of Firefox by replacing components written in C/C++. How that plays out for future OS/2 ports of Firefox.. we will see.

Firefox ESR 38 for OS/2: update to version 38.8.0

An update from 38.2.1 to 38.8.0 (Beta 7) has been released. There has been no major enhancements in the port except security fixes. Changes for this release:

• native printing is disabled
• simple (zip) based setups are not supported

Firefox ESR 38 for OS/2 Beta 6 released

The long awaited Firefox ESR 38 release (38.2.1) is now available after the previous alpha builds in 2015. It took some more time to work on the new fontconfig support and the pango/cairo display engine. The font support and rendering has changed compared to previous versions and thus it requires additional config files and runtime dlls. A newer Cairo version is required for pango, this was ported and is working but printing is currently broken because of this change.
The update to ESR 38.6.1 is already on the way, Mozilla’s next planed update will be ESR 38.7.0.

Firefox 38.2.1 ESR beta for OS/2

Changes in this release:

• Switch to original fontconfig for much better font substitution.
• Switch from GPI to Pango for better text layout and rendering. This obsoletes ‘gfx.os2.font.*’ properties and also brings long-awaited support for @font-face (loadable Web fonts).
• Temporarily disable native print driver support which is currently broken.

Download
Firefox 38.2.1 ESR Release OS/2 Beta 6 (en)

Firefox 24.8.1 ESR Beta 3 for OS/2 & eCS released

A new year, new software: the new Beta 3 of the Firefox 24 ESR branch for OS/2. The base code is the same as in the Beta 2 release and the main dll of Firefox (XUL.DLL) can now be loaded into high memory (HMA) by using an external utility. To create a detailed error report its required to load the symbol files of this build and the latest Exceptq runtime, the links can be found on the release page. Update: it seems that the ability to load xul.dll into high mem is again broken as issue #89 is tagged as not resolved.

Changes in this release compared to the previous Beta 2 (24.8.1) release:

• fix for the trap report generation
• XUL.DLL can now be loaded into high memory (HMA) by using the highmem utility

Download:

• Firefox ESR 24.8.1 Beta 3 (37MB)
• Highmem utility (20KB)