Have a Macbook and want to build Thunderbird? Here is how to setup that development environment in just a few commands! This is useful if you are interesting in fixing bugs, trying out patches, or making any local changes to Thunderbird.
Tutorial commands:
Install homebrew and tools needed to build Thunderbird
$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
$ brew install python pipx mercurial
$ pipx install MozPhab
Checkout the source code
$ mkdir tb-build && cd tb-build
$ hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central source/
$ cd source/
$ hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central comm/
Run the bootstrap command from the source directory. Choose 2 (to build Firefox for Desktop). Choose all of the default options.
$ ./mach bootstrap
Make sure your ~/.zshrc has the following line:
export PATH="$PATH:/Users/USERNAME/.local/bin"
Create your mozconfig file in the source directory with the following info
$ vim mozconfig
ac_add_options --enable-project=comm/mail
ac_add_options --with-ccache=sccache
ac_add_options --enable-clang-plugin
mk_add_options AUTOCLOBBER=1
Build Thunderbird!
$ ./mach build
Run what you just built!
$ ./mach run