Group: IceCat/Compile and package/build 52.3.0 on macOS 10.13 High Sierra

build_52.3.0_on_macosx_high_sierra_10.13 en en

• The information contained in this page is current as of: 2017-10-29.
• The text in this page was last modified on: 2018-02-27.
• Note: At least one person has reported being able to install on Sierra (10.12.6) using this documentation.

Build

   Prepare the development environment:
       install Xcode and Homebrew
       install yasm with Homebrew
       install autoconf@2.13 with Homebrew
       if you miss dependencies, the configure step below will tell you and you just need to get them from Homebrew
   Download IceCat Source & configure the compilation

        $ wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/52.3.0/icecat-52.3.0-gnu1.tar.bz2
        $ tar xjvf icecat-52.3.0-gnu1.tar.bz2
        $ cd icecat-52.3.0
        $ mkdir objdir
        $ mkdir -p ./browser/branding/unofficial/moz.build
        $ cd objdir
        $ ../configure --with-l10n-base=../l10n --enable-official-branding

That's it for the preparations. On a side note, the other configure options found in the original instructions were all refused. If configure does not protest, you're ready. If it does, you either miss dependencies (see step 1.4. above), or you have other issues on your machine. Check the net for error messages, fix the errors, and you should be fine. Now comes compiling time, and it's going to take quite some time, so get a book ready.

       make
       make package
   

When make package quits without complaining, you're ready. IceCat is in the dist folder. There is one that works out of the box, and one that comes as a .dmg (icecat-52.3.0.en-US.mac64.dmg on my machine). Either seems to work fine.

During the make process, you may run into an error that says something like: ...(stuff) ... CLOBBER dependency dropped ... (more stuff) ...

and the script proposes you:

To ignore this message, touch "/Users/suzume/Documents/Code/tmp/icecat-52.3.0/configure"

Well just do as suggested:

touch "/Users/suzume/Documents/Code/tmp/icecat-52.3.0/configure"

and relaunch the build process with make. That worked for me.

Ok, make and make package have worked, you have an IceCat build and a .dmg package into /dist, and you want to start and try the thing. Just launch it and enjoy the web, à la GNU.

Now, you may run into a problem when you want to go to a site. The first time you use IceCat, every time you want to go to a site, a error page gets displayed with the message "Content Encoding Error" (etc.)

The fix is really easy: quit IceCat and relaunch it.

Adapted from Jean-Christophe's post.