How to build Thunderbird-ESR (and later patch it to become Betterbird)?

[kirsche]

My aim is to build Betterbird, a soft fork of Thunderbird-ESR, for FreeBSD. My idea is to start with building mail/thunderbird-esr before applying all patches of Betterbird.

I read the Poudriere chapter in porters handbook and viewed/followed some tutorials like Setting up Poudriere on FreeBSD - Building Ports (youtube). I also read some Mozilla documentation like Linux Build Prerequisites and Betterbird build instructions.

I setup my jails and ports-tree:

~ # poudriere jail -l
JAILNAME VERSION         ARCH  METHOD TIMESTAMP           PATH
150build 15.0-RELEASE-p1 amd64 http   2026-01-02 20:59:41 /usr/local/poudriere/jails/150build

~ # poudriere ports -l
PORTSTREE METHOD    TIMESTAMP           PATH
default   git+https 2026-01-04 19:21:33 /usr/local/poudriere/ports/default

I setup my distfile

~ # cat /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist
mail/thunderbird-esr

I started poudriere options -j 150build -f /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist. But now I have tons of dependencies like mercurial, binutils, cmake, bash, Tesseract OCR, SANE, ffmpeg, CUPS, etc., which I am supposed to build by mysely. First I think I do not need a specific configurations for most dependencies. It seems pointless to me to rebuild all packages when I could just install them directly with pkg into the jail. Somewhere I saw a make -D NO_DIALOG for ports but I do not know how to use it with poudriere.

Here are my questions:

1. The hard way: I have to build all dependencies by myself ⇒ Is there a way to get a list of sane configuration settings for Thunderbird dependencies?
2. The simpler approach: There is a way to avoid building the complete dependency tree by myself:
   1. How to set up poudriere jail / ports-tree so that available packages from FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE are used?
   2. How to run Thunderbird configuration to build only parts of the dependencies like ffmpeg?
3. "You are holding it wrong!" ⇒ I am a complete beginner. Did I misunderstood something, or is there a simpler approach to building a Betterbird?

 

[SirDice]

How to set up poudriere jail / ports-tree so that available packages from FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE are used?

     -b branch
              Fetch binary packages from a binary package repository instead
              of building them.  The branch argument can be one of the
              following: latest, quarterly, release_X (where X is the minor
              version of a release, e.g., “0”), or url.

              With this option poudriere will first try to fetch a binary
              package from the specified binary package repository.

poudriere-bulk(8)

 

[nxjoseph]

     -b branch
              Fetch binary packages from a binary package repository instead
              of building them.  The branch argument can be one of the
              following: latest, quarterly, release_X (where X is the minor
              version of a release, e.g., “0”), or url.

              With this option poudriere will first try to fetch a binary
              package from the specified binary package repository.

poudriere-bulk(8)

I found this option really tricky cuz i could never made use of it for myself. I think they can go into thunderbird port and run a make install-missing-packages then figure out later steps. I don't know how you can do that in jail/poudriere though.

 

[kirsche]

I tried -b with: poudriere bulk -f /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist -j 150build -b quarterly

But something is wrong:

[150build-default] [2026-01-06_22h10m35s] [parallel_build] Queued: 297 Built: 257 Failed: 0   Skipped: 0   Ignored: 0   Fetched: 0   Tobu
ild: 40   Time: 00:25:40
 ID  TOTAL                            ORIGIN   PKGNAME                               PHASE PHASE    TMPFS       CPU% MEM%
[01] 00:00:23                 print/harfbuzz | harfbuzz-12.3.0               build-depends 00:00:07 98.79 MiB   4.4% 0.1%
[02] 00:10:14                      lang/rust | rust-1.92.0                           build 00:08:29 5.90 GiB  222.7% 3.3%
[03] 00:10:52           devel/llvm19@default | llvm19-19.1.7_1                       build 00:08:21 2.28 GiB  304.4% 4.7%
[04] 00:00:22 graphics/gtk-update-icon-cache | gtk-update-icon-cache-3.24.42 build-depends 00:00:13 1.03 MiB      0%   0%
[05] 00:00:46               security/p11-kit | p11-kit-0.25.10                   configure 00:00:00 11.67 MiB            
[06] 00:01:35                      lang/vala | vala-0.56.18,1                    configure 00:00:51 58.32 MiB     0%   0%

For example I build rust and llvm19. But they shall be downloaded/used as pkg binary.

 

[kirsche]

I restarted from scratch and reduced my setup to build sudo instead of tunderbird to find the error. But I think I failed again. Perhaps someone can point out my mistake.

1. old jail
   1. stop: poudriere jail -k -j 150build
   2. delete: poudriere jail -d -j 150build
2. poudriere ports
   1. clean all ports trees: poudriere distclean -a -J 12 -y
   2. remove port options: poudriere options -j 150build -r -f /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist
   3. delete ports tree: poudriere ports -d -p default
   4. remove old distfiles: rm -r /usr/ports/distfiles/*
3. remove old packages: rm -r /usr/local/poudriere/data/packages/*
4. setup configuration:
   1. :~ # egrep -v '^$|^#' /usr/local/etc/poudriere.conf
      

      ZPOOL=zroot
      ZROOTFS=/poudriere
      FREEBSD_HOST=ftp://ftp.freebsd.org
      RESOLV_CONF=/etc/resolv.conf
      BASEFS=/usr/local/poudriere
      POUDRIERE_DATA=${BASEFS}/data
      USE_PORTLINT=no
      USE_TMPFS=yes
      TMPFS_LIMIT=10
      MAX_MEMORY=10
      DISTFILES_CACHE=/usr/ports/distfiles
      CHECK_CHANGED_OPTIONS=verbose
      CHECK_CHANGED_DEPS=yes
      CCACHE_DIR=/var/cache/ccache
      PARALLEL_JOBS=6
      PREPARE_PARALLEL_JOBS=3
      ALLOW_MAKE_JOBS=yes
      KEEP_OLD_PACKAGES=no
      USE_COLORS=yes
      PACKAGE_FETCH_BRANCH=2025Q4
      PACKAGE_FETCH_URL=pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/\${ABI}

   2. :~ # cat /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/make.conf
      

      # general
      ALLOW_UNSUPPORTED_SYSTEM= YES
      DISABLE_LICENSES=         YES
      WITHOUT_DEBUG=            YES
      NO_PROFILE=               YES
      BUILD_STATIC=             YES
      OPTIONS_UNSET+=           DOCS INFO MANPAGES EXAMPLES PROFILE SOURCES WAYLAND
      # National Language Support and Link Time Opimization
      OPTIONS_SET+=             NLS LTO CPU_OPTS OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS STATIC
      ENABLE_LICENSES=          YES
      
      # ccache(1)
      WITH_CCACHE_BUILD=        YES
      
      # ports build options (defined in poutriere.conf)
      # FORCE_MAKE_JOBS=        YES
      # MAKE_JOBS_UNSAFE=       YES
      # MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER=       8
      
      CPUTYPE?=                 native
      OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS=         YES
      BUILD_OPTIMIZED=          YES
      WITH_CPUFLAGS=            YES
      WITH_OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS=    YES

   3. :~ # zfs list
      

      NAME                                        USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
      zroot                                      28.7G  3.49T  30.6K  /zroot
      zroot/ROOT                                 18.1G  3.49T  30.6K  none
      zroot/ROOT/15.0-RELEASE_2025-12-17_231732  1.33K  3.49T  15.5G  /
      zroot/ROOT/default                         18.1G  3.49T  17.5G  /
      ...
      zroot/poudriere                            1.62G  3.49T  33.3K  /usr/local/poudriere
      zroot/poudriere/data                       91.8M  3.49T  38.6K  /usr/local/poudriere/data
      zroot/poudriere/data/.m                    32.0K  3.49T  32.0K  /usr/local/poudriere/data/.m
      zroot/poudriere/data/cache                  167K  3.49T   167K  /usr/local/poudriere/data/cache
      zroot/poudriere/data/images                30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /usr/local/poudriere/data/images
      zroot/poudriere/data/logs                  26.0M  3.49T  26.0M  /usr/local/poudriere/data/logs
      zroot/poudriere/data/packages              65.5M  3.49T  65.5M  /usr/local/poudriere/data/packages
      zroot/poudriere/data/wrkdirs               30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /usr/local/poudriere/data/wrkdirs
      zroot/poudriere/jails                      1.14G  3.49T  30.6K  /usr/local/poudriere/jails
      zroot/poudriere/jails/150rel               1.14G  3.49T  1.14G  /usr/local/poudriere/jails/150rel
      zroot/poudriere/ports                       400M  3.49T  30.6K  /usr/local/poudriere/ports
      zroot/poudriere/ports/2025Q4                400M  3.49T   400M  /usr/local/poudriere/ports/2025Q4
      zroot/test                                 30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /zroot/test
      zroot/tmp                                  1.44M  3.49T  1.44M  /tmp
      zroot/usr                                   489M  3.49T  30.6K  /usr
      zroot/usr/ports                             489M  3.49T   489M  /usr/ports
      zroot/usr/src                              30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /usr/src
      zroot/var                                  1008K  3.49T  30.6K  /var
      zroot/var/audit                            30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /var/audit
      zroot/var/crash                            30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /var/crash
      zroot/var/log                               835K  3.49T   835K  /var/log
      zroot/var/mail                             50.6K  3.49T  50.6K  /var/mail
      zroot/var/tmp                              30.6K  3.49T  30.6K  /var/tmp

5. check ccache configuration: ccache -p vs. CCACHE_DIR=/var/cache/ccache using egrep -v '^$|^#' /usr/local/etc/poudriere.conf | sort
6. generate new jail: poudriere jail -c -j 150rel -v 15.0-RELEASE -a amd64
7. generate new ports tree: poudriere ports -c -p 2025Q4 -B 2025Q4 -v
8. add sudo to portlist (the package to build): echo "security/sudo" > /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist
9. configure build: poudriere options -j 150rel -p 2025Q4 -n -c -f /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist
10. build: poudriere bulk -f /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist -j 150rel -b quarterly -p 2025Q4

Results:
1. I only see 2 parallel builds at the same time out of possible 6 as configured in poudriere.conf.
2. I see no llvm, rust or whatever is inside 15.0-Release base. Perfekt.
3. I see building messages of all those files when Ctrl+t. All packages seems to be downloaded and also rebuild from source:

:~ # ls -l /usr/local/poudriere/data/packages/150rel-2025Q4/.latest/All
total 66976
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   334718 Jan  7 15:29 autoconf-2.72.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel     1002 Jan  7 15:27 autoconf-switch-20220527.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   559261 Jan  7 15:27 ccache-3.7.12_8.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   289619 Jan  7 15:29 cyrus-sasl-2.1.28_5.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   209074 Jan  7 13:14 gettext-runtime-0.23.1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel  3018117 Jan  7 13:15 gettext-tools-0.23.1_1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   491313 Jan  7 15:27 gmake-4.4.1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel     4620 Jan  7 13:13 indexinfo-0.3.1_1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    49735 Jan  7 15:27 libffi-3.5.1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   462490 Jan  7 13:14 libtextstyle-0.23.1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   181159 Jan  7 15:28 m4-1.4.19_1,1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   166587 Jan  7 15:27 mpdecimal-4.0.1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   572580 Jan  7 15:29 openldap26-client-2.6.10.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 16691129 Jan  7 15:29 perl5-5.42.0_1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 14352843 Jan  7 13:13 pkg-2.4.2.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    84114 Jan  7 13:13 pkgconf-2.4.3,1.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 28308132 Jan  7 15:30 python311-3.11.14.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel   388621 Jan  7 15:27 readline-8.2.13_2.pkg
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel  1359414 Jan  7 15:30 sudo-1.9.17p2_1.pkg

:~ # ls -l /usr/ports/distfiles/*
total 25533
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 1389680 Dec 22  2023 autoconf-2.72.tar.xz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel  506948 Dec  8  2021 ccache-3.7.12.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 4034803 Feb 22  2022 cyrus-sasl-2.1.28.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 1419757 Jun 10  2025 libffi-3.5.1.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 1654908 May 28  2021 m4-1.4.19.tar.xz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 1305648 Feb 26  2023 make-4.4.1.tar.lz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel  316268 May  6  2025 mpdecimal-4.0.1.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 6517089 May 23  2025 openldap-2.6.10.tgz
drwxr-xr-x  2 root wheel       3 Jan  7 15:27 perl
drwxr-xr-x  2 root wheel       3 Jan  7 15:28 python
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 3043952 Sep 26  2022 readline-8.2.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1198 Oct  5  2022 readline82-001
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1134 Nov 17  2023 readline82-002
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1201 Nov 17  2023 readline82-003
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1708 Nov 17  2023 readline82-004
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1501 Nov 17  2023 readline82-005
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    3031 Nov 17  2023 readline82-006
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1422 Nov 17  2023 readline82-007
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1697 Jan 14  2024 readline82-008
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    2270 Jan 14  2024 readline82-009
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    2653 Jan 14  2024 readline82-010
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    1865 Aug  2  2024 readline82-011
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    2824 Aug  2  2024 readline82-012
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel    5757 Aug  2  2024 readline82-013
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 5451682 Jul 26 17:16 sudo-1.9.17p2.tar.gz

/usr/ports/distfiles/perl:
total 14079
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 14400988 Jul  3  2025 perl-5.42.0.tar.xz

/usr/ports/distfiles/python:
total 19964
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 20326860 Oct  9 19:07 Python-3.11.14.tar.xz

What's the problem? Or am I misinterpreting something?

 

[SirDice]

2.1) that command ferrets out the 'distfiles', i.e. all the source files from which the ports are built (usually saved to /usr/ports/distfiles or wherever you have set DISTFILES_CACHE to) . It doesn't 'clean' the ports tree itself. There's nothing to 'clean' in those ports trees. You might thinking of the work/ directories you see when you build from ports yourself. But poudriere saves those elsewhere (a tmpfs(4) filesystem, by default; USE_TMPFS=yes).

2.4) You already cleaned it out in step 2.1.

I only see 2 parallel builds at the same time out of possible 6 as configured in poudriere.conf.

More jobs can only run if their dependencies can be satisfied. And if there's more than 2 to build of course.

What's the problem?

You have a whole bunch of global options in your make.conf, turning various options on. Deviating everything from the defaults the FreeBSD repository builders use.

              poudriere will only use packages that:
              •   come from a repository having the same or older version of
                  pkg.
              •   do not have a locally fetched package already.
              •   are not IGNORED.
              •   match the expected local version.
              •   match the expected ABI.
              •   match the expected runtime and library dependencies.
              •   match the expected OPTIONS when CHECK_CHANGED_OPTIONS is                    <--------- !!!! 
                  enabled (default: on).
              •   is NOT listed in PACKAGE_FETCH_BLACKLIST.
              •   is NOT listed with -C, or -c, when -t is used.
              The -v flag can be used to show these decisions during build.
              Specifing twice will show more details on why some are skipped.

rm -rf /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/make.conf
rm -rf /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/*-options

 

[Phishfry]

For example I build rust and llvm19. But they shall be downloaded/used as pkg binary.

Welcome to the club. That part don't work so well. Be patient.

 

[kirsche]

Thanks for the feedback.

              poudriere will only use packages that:
              •   come from a repository having the same or older version of
                  pkg.

I possibly see my mistake. I mixed a jail of 15.0-RELESE with port of origin/main. So if I want to build something like thunderbird which needs rust it cannot use rust from 15.0-RELESE but has to build it from origin/main port. Is this correct?

2.1) ... the source files from which the ports are built (usually saved to /usr/ports/distfiles ...). ... There's nothing to 'clean' in those ports trees. ... But poudriere saves those elsewhere ...).

2.4) You already cleaned it out in step 2.1.

In my case :~ # poudriere distclean -a -J 12 -p 2025Q4 -y does not wipe neither /usr/ports/distfiles/ nor /usr/local/poudriere/data/packages/150rel-2025Q4/.latest/All. I think the last sentense of your first paragraph describes the meaning of the command.

I will adjust my setup and try again.

 

[Phishfry]

does not wipe neithe

Oh yea. That part don't work well either. Deleting built works. You need to properly delete jails then sweep up leftover files. If not chflag hell.
/usr/obj/ is the root build directory for poudriere and there is stuff scattered elsewhere like /poudriere.d/. I move my /usr/local/poudriere/ to /poudriere for convenience. Change conf.
Ports end up under that directory with default setting. /dev/null is probably better. Less diskspace used.

 

[kirsche]

Some progress...

To be able to use poudriere-bulk -b option, I setup on a trial base:

root@mybsd:~ # poudriere jail -l
JAILNAME VERSION      ARCH  METHOD TIMESTAMP           PATH
160c     16.0-CURRENT amd64 http   2026-01-09 12:09:28 /usr/local/poudriere/jails/160c

root@mybsd:~ # poudriere ports -l
PORTSTREE METHOD    TIMESTAMP           PATH
default   git+https 2026-01-09 12:13:49 /usr/local/poudriere/ports/default

root@mybsd:~ # git -C /usr/local/poudriere/ports/default/ status | head -2
On branch main
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

And I got:

root@mybsd:~ # poudriere bulk -f /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/portlist -j 160c -b latest
[00:00:00] Creating the reference jail... done
[00:00:00] Warning: !!! Jail is newer than host. (Jail: 1600007, Host: 1500068) !!!
[00:00:00] Warning: This is not supported.
[00:00:00] Warning: Host kernel must be same or newer than jail.
[00:00:00] Warning: Expect build failures.

Same result when using 15.0-STABLE. Great!

Seems for "poudiere bulk ... -b" a 15.0-RELEASE jail is bound to a 2025Q4 port. If I want to benefit from -b option and latest ports I have to change my host at least to 15.0-STABLE.

Is my assumption correct?