TenFourFox Development
What's new in TenFourFox, the Mozilla browser for Power Macs.
Monday, June 6, 2022
macOS Oxnard
Saturday, April 30, 2022
April patch set for TenFourFox
The next ESR, version 102, is due in June. I'll change the EV and certificate roots over around that time as usual, but we might also take the opportunity to pull up some of the vendored libraries like zlib, so it might be a somewhat bigger update than it would ordinarily be.
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Next update set available for TenFourFox
The workaround is needed because TenFourFox doesn't support IntersectionObserver. I'm pondering whether this is the point to add a global polyfill to the browser that could potentially cover this and other deficiencies, but although it would be nice to not play whack-a-mole so much, that would have some consequences for performance and memory use over a targetted fix like this. I don't want to get too complex with having a "black list" for sites that need the polyfill you can add to, but maybe that's the least bad option. I'll do some thinking.
In case you missed it, I've always maintained that the most logical upgrade path from a PowerPC-based computer is to ... another PowerPC-based computer. SheepShaver, the well-known classic Mac OS emulator (which many of you use to run Classic apps in Leopard), is now ported to OpenPOWER, so you can run it on a POWER9-based workstation like the Raptor Talos II or Blackbird. Myself, with this port working, I've migrated almost entirely from QEMU to SheepShaver except for a few apps that still have compatibility issues. Come on in: Power ISA isn't dead, not by a long shot.
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Updates to TenFourFox on Github
Friday, December 10, 2021
The strawberry iMac that made the Wikipedia
Back briefly on topic, watch for a dump of security updates in the next few days now that I've made some more progress on the POWER9 JIT for my Raptor Talos II.
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Do you run Void on your Power Mac?
Friday, October 29, 2021
The current status of DIY TenFourFox
So now it's time for you to make your first build (and, if you feel adventurous, find a problem and try to fix it, but let's take baby steps). Officially, we have documentation for that already using MacPorts. A semi-frozen build of MacPorts what I use on my G5: I have three trees, one being the main testing debug tree which pulls from Github, and then two local subtrees that pull from the local debug tree (created with git clone --shared so that they are about 25% the size) which I use to make rolling G5-optimized (for my Quad) and 7450-optimized (for my iMac and iBook) builds. I do my work in the debug tree and make sure everything functions properly, then check it in and git pull and gmake -f client.mk build in the optimized subtrees to roll up the changes. When the subtrees are happy too, I'll git push from the main debug tree into Github. I consider this as officially supported a solution as presently exists under the circumstances. The Quad runs TenFourFox directly from the G5 subtree now.
However, MacPorts does have a lot of prereqs and requires some additional prep time (sometimes many hours) to build the tools from source. Macintosh Garden has an "unofficial TenFourFox toolkit" that contains an Automator workflow, a supervising script and a fully precompiled toolchain. You will have to install Xcode first (2.5 for Tiger, 3.1.4 for Leopard), but that is the only apparent requirement, and multiple users have reported it builds the browser successfully.
One common problem that gets reported on non-G5 systems is the dreaded internal compiler error. However, when the build is restarted, it usually progresses and continues for awhile without incident. The problem is likely tied to memory pressure and compilers really thrash memory. If your system hits this a lot and starts to annoy you, consider removing -j2 out of the build flags in whatever .mozconfig you're using (change your copy in .mozconfig, not the master *.mozcfg). This will only run one compiler instance at a time, which is slower, but requires less memory and is more likely to complete the build in one shot without manual intervention.
If you really don't want to build it yourself, however, you do have at least one option: InterWebPPC. This is a modified build of TenFourFox that explicitly removes some features for performance, so it is not equivalent with TenFourFox, and it is not necessarily built on any particular schedule either. It also does not have separate G4/7400 and G4/7450 builds, though this may not be noticeable on your particular system. You can download prebuilt binaries for G3, G4 or G5 as well as compile it from source using the "unofficial toolkit" above. I haven't seen other downstream builds yet but if you know of one, plan to make one or are using one, post it in the comments.
There are a couple other security fixes I'm reviewing, and I'm toying with some Github specific hacks to deal with its dependence on async/await, but these again will not be done on any particular timetable (I'll post here when or if I get around to them). Still, some of you have already built the browser successfully, and if you can build TenFourFox on your Power Mac you can build pretty much anything. Perhaps this might spark some additional development interest ...