🍎macOS

This is a step by step guide on how to build Dot Browser on macOS.

First things first...

• Make sure you have at least 20 GB of space free on your hard drive.

• You'll need to be on a 64-bit operating system to clone and build Dot Browser.

  • If typing uname -m into a terminal returns x86_64 you are on a 64-bit computer.

• The following software and tools are required for the build process:

  • Git (git-scm.org)

  • Mercurial (mercurial-scm.org)

  • Homebrew (brew.sh)

  • python3 (python.org)

  • python2 (python.org)

  • git-cinnabar (github.com/glandium/git-cinnabar/#setup)

Dot Browser is based on Firefox, which is why it is referenced a lot in the build process.

Downloading the bootstrapper

We're now going to install the tool to clone and bootstrap Dot Browser.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dothq/browser-ff/master/python/mozboot/bin/bootstrap.py -o bootstrap.py

This will download the bootstrap.py Python script from GitHub.

Now we want to run the bootstrapper by typing the command below. The bootstrap will take around 10 minutes up to a couple hours.

python3 bootstrap.py

After the clone is complete the bootstrapper will ask you what version you want to build. This table will demonstrate the differences between an artifact build and a generic build.

	Artifact builds	Generic builds
Time to build	~10 seconds	~1 hour
Can build on low-end computers	✅	❌
Can build front-end (HTML, CSS, JS)	✅	✅
Can build C++ code	❌	✅
Can build Rust code	❌	✅
Modify build system	❌	✅

Building Dot Browser

It's time to build the browser! Start by entering the repo directory.

cd dot # or the name of the repo you chose in the bootstrapper

Now we can start building.

./mach build

If everything went smoothly with the build you should see the following text:

1:03.56 Your build was successful!
To take your build for a test drive, run: |mach run|

Running Dot Browser

You've made it! You have successfully built Dot Browser. Now it's time to take our build for a test drive. We can do that by running:

./mach run

If everything went according to plan, you should see Dot Browser appear before your eyes!

It's magic! ✨

If you encounter any issues, open an issue with the correct component on our GitHub repository.