1 Pull down and install the code
Pull down the SpiderMonkey source from Mozilla. You can use CVS, or I simply got the tars from:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/js-1.7.0.tar.gz and http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/nspr/releases/v4.7/src/nspr-4.7.tar.gz.
I dropped them into ~/mozilla/tars (location doesn't matter).
4 /Users/rmills/mozilla/tars> ls -lt
total 4848
-rw-r--r-- 1 rmills staff 1165607 Mar 7 10:32 js-1.7.0.tar.gz
-rw------- 1 rmills staff 1304632 Feb 6 21:28 nspr-4.7.tar.gz
5 /Users/rmills/mozilla/tars>
Open the tars and install them into a directory. Again, I used ~/mozilla, however it's your choice. You will however have to create a symbolic link from dist -> to the nspr dist directory (I discovered with some pain - I haven't found this documented anywhere.)
6 /P/Users/rmills/mozilla> ls -lt
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 5 rmills staff 264 Mar 7 13:28 tars
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 rmills staff 29 Mar 7 13:26 dist -> nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub/dist
drwxr-xr-x 3 rmills staff 264 Feb 6 13:28 nspr-4.7
drwxr-xr-x 5 rmills staff 264 Oct 19 11:58 js
2 Build and install the nspr libraries
Build and install nspr (some support libraries needed for the File object and Thread Safety in SpiderMonkey).
7 /Users/rmills/mozilla/nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub> cd /Users/rmills/mozilla/nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub
8 /Users/rmills/mozilla/nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub> configure
loading cache ./config.cache
checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin9.2.0
... shake rattle and roll ...
9 /Users/rmills/mozilla/nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub> make
.... more rattle and roll ...
10 /Users/rmills/mozilla/nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub> sudo make install
... more rolling ...
3 Build SpiderMonkey libraries and js shell
Now build the SpiderMonkey js shell (a command-line prompt for JavaScript).
11 /Users/rmills/mozilla/nspr-4.7/mozilla/nsprpub> cd ../../../js/src
12 /Users/rmills/mozilla/js/src> make -f Makefile.ref JS_HAS_FILE_OBJECT=1 JS_THREADSAFE=1
... do dah do dah ...
4 Test js shell
13 /Users/rmills/mozilla/js/src> Darwin_DBG.OBJ/js
js> dir = new File(".") ; "OK"
OK
js> for ( i in dir ) print(i) ;
length
parent
path
name
isDirectory
isFile
exists
canRead
canWrite
canAppend
canReplace
isOpen
type
mode
creationTime
lastModified
size
hasRandomAccess
hasAutoFlush
position
isNative
js> files = dir.list() ; "OK"
OK
js> for ( i in files ) print(files[i].name)
.cvsignore
... bla bla bla ...
Y.js
js> quit() ;
14 /Users/rmills/mozilla/js/src>
Pretty cool, right! And it has E4X (EcmaScript extensions for XML). The File object however seems to have a lot of bugs. I'll discuss them later.
5 Still to be written
I'm going to continue this article to discuss the following additional subjects:
- Bugs in the File object
- Building and debugging with Xcode on Mac OS X
- Adding new Object Classes to SpiderMonkey
- Embedding SpiderMonkey in Applications
- Building a Universal version
However for the moment, I'm busy with something else and I'll return to this subject eventually.
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