Setting up a Symbol Server Sandbox

After today's IRC chat with luser, I now have a list of things to do in order to acheive 0.1:

• set up a localhost server


• make buildsymbols from my own build


• load those symbols onto the local server


• connect them up to my debugger to make sure it all works


• get the microsoft scripts to work adding source code to my local pdb files


• so that the debugger can access the source code from being pointed to my server

Starting off, I set up IIS on my computer so that I can have a localhost webserver. This was a bit tricky with some unexpected authentication issues but I think that I have it working now. If I point my browser to http://localhost/symbolServer/ I have a directory of the pdb files that I created by calling make buildsymbols in my objdir.

The next move was to point my debugger (Visual Studio 2005) to the localhost symbol server. However, this is where I got stuck. I could load up the microsoft symbols but it would skip right over my firefox ones.

So I'm going back to square 1. I'm rebuilding with debug disabled because this may be a part of the issue. If this doesn't work I need to look into either a) symbol server directory structure because maybe I'm missing something about the hierarchy or b) perhaps my IIS set-up authentication issues are preventing VStudio from accessing the symbols.

Of course, in the back of my head I know it could also be c) something else entirely.

Back to the building.

Running 2 versions of Firefox

In IRC chat the other day I asked how often Ted (aka luser) did builds and he said not that often - pointing me instead to the nightly builds saying that he used these instead since they were updated automatically every day.

So I downloaded one and installed it.

Now, my favourite extension is the foxmarks synchronizer app because I find myself travelling between my desktop Mac at home and my PC laptop, as well I will often work at jobs where there's a need for a third foxmarks setup.

This extension doesn't work for 3.0 yet - so I've currently been opening the command window and opening each version with the -Profilemanager so that I can use my default profile for 2.0 (with foxmarks) and my "nightlyBuilds" profile for exploring 3.0

Now I read in a post that I can just manually change the version. Sounds great, but I don't know if I want to go through this everytime there's a new nightly version number.

Anyone else know a better way?

Ted's visit

Learning from today's class with Ted Mielczarek:

- lots of successful builds, so things are getting easier
- the error that we are getting about directory names with spaces is an advancement over the past when it just failed for an unknown reason
- there's a bug right now with building on Vista, there's a work-around right now
- VM is a great way to test in different environments (I have VMware, just need to get it going)
- ac options are for autoconf whereas mk options are for make
- a reminder to use an object directory with builds
- why client.mk? you can build mozilla without it - but it's easier with client.mk - it handles the MOZ_CO_PROJECT stuff
- looking at tinderbox - not everyone is using tinderbox...lots of people use buildbot so it would be great to get more of the mozilla stuff into buildbot
- there's work being done to get rid of autoconf - switch to python script instead
- talking about replacing make but not sure to what
- google-breakpad, a crash reporting system, integrated with mozilla
- demo of crashing, reporting the crash - bug reports (this is all still a little overwhelming)

And then a break.

- make -C
- mozconfig options for debugging:
ac_add_options --enable-debug (in optimizations)
- demo of searching code at lxr.mozilla.org


Final note - in order to do the Source server I apparently don't have to be stellar at C++, phew!