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Waterfox 43.0 & 43.0.1 (Installer Only) Reverted back to 40.1.0 and some Insight into Waterfox

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

Waterfox 43 for Mac, Portable Edition and existing Waterfox/Firefox users unaffected. Just a delay on the installers until the bugs get fixed.

I’ve got a bit of a conundrum here. So with the latest Firefox 43 codebase, Intel’s C++ has been causing havoc, creating a difficult time for me.

For the last two months since the release of 40.1.0, I’ve been working every single day (I wish I was exaggerating..) waking up and going to bed doing nothing but trying to get Intel’s C++ compiler to build Firefox. Debugging wasn’t fruitful as almost every variable would read <Error reading register value> or <Unable to read memory>. Almost impossible to follow where this was occurring or why.

As mentioned in a previous blog post Intel has a compiler bug causing an internal error with the use of Mozilla’s own Tuple header. After a week of messing around I realised I could just use the std::tuple to replace Mozilla’s Tuple calls and it worked! But alas, Firefox 43 was finalised and I though to myself if I released Waterfox 42 this late…what would be the point?

So..lets get Waterfox 43 done and out the gate, we’ve got a week until release I’m sure I can get it done since I’ve gotten 42 to build! Oh boy was I wrong. After applying the relevant patches to get IC++ to build Firefox, the application would exit straight away. No crashes, nothing. Just a clean exit. Debugging wasn’t helpful either. Crap, what now?

I did the only thing I found plausible at the time…and that was to rummage through every patch between Firefox 42 -> Firefox 43 (changelog here).

As you can see…no clear indicator of what would be the contributions of Firefox 42 compiling fine with IC++ but Firefox 43 to not. So I went to Mozilla’s mercurial repository and started downloading each changelog between 42->43 and compiling each one until it would break. After about two weeks straight of doing this, Bug 1197316 - remove PR_snprintf calls in xpcom/ was found to be the first reason Waterfox would quit straight after being launched.

Progress! Or…not so much. When using any optimisation flag that wasn’t O1 (optimize for size), the UI would be malformed. Oh boy, time to start carrying on through that changelog. After another week, Bug 1157984 - Incorrect CSS 3D display was found to be the reason IC++ was causing bad code.

Christmas was here! Unfortunately apart from having dinner with my parents on the day (and still trying to find the bugs) I spent every other waking hour preparing Waterfox. A few days ago I had whole build ready (and released as you could see)…but there was a bug cropping up that just didn’t make any sense. Every now and then some users would message me that v43 would crash right on launch. Ouch…why?

Turns out that for whatever reason, if Waterfox doesn’t have access to an already existing Firefox or Waterfox profile, it will crash straight away. GREAT. If you run Waterfox without a profile but with the -p flag it’ll run as well. Just not when no clear profile is available or created for it.

So we’re to where am I now. What do I do? I’m dreading that I’m going to spend the next few more weeks of my life waking up and doing nothing but downloading changesets…compiling…finding if the bug exists and then going to an older changeset below and repeating untill I get a changeset that works. Then I have to hope to all that is good that this changeset is an isolated bug patch that other patches don’t rely on it, because if they do I’d have to rever them as well and that could go on forever.

As of now I’m talking to Intel’s support forum, but it’s difficult trying to isolate the issue with just a few chats and some screenshots. I’m not particulary great at debugging something so complex either…but here’s to trying my best to get this release out for everyone.

If I have the same issues with Firefox 44…I’m not sure if health wise (for my mental sanity) I’ll be able to carry this on. I think I’ll be looking at IC++ alternative. But for now…onwards.

All the best, Alex

4 Year Anniversary Waterfox Charity and Storm Search

Alex Kontos
Alex Kontos
Founder

Hello everyone! I’m the developer of Waterfox, Alex Kontos. 4 Years ago on the 27th of March I released the very first build of Waterfox for everyone to try out. It was posted over at the lovely community of Overclock.net and since then Waterfox has become known around the world.

I never expected it to become what it has and I’ve embraced every success that it has made. I am proud to be part of the global Waterfox Community and the wonderful people that make it up. I really appreciate the kind messages and posts I see about Waterfox on the Overclock.net and Waterfox subreddit and I am so happy that even 4 years on, Waterfox is growing and making a positive impact on the web.

I’m very happy to announce a new idea for Waterfox: Charitable Giving!

What exactly is this?

Section titled “What exactly is this?”

Back in March 2014, I was invited to an event called Pitch@Palace, hosted in London. Various technology startups showcased their ideas and it was a great opportunity to collaborate with each other. I met some super people who had a great idea: Give the users of Waterfox the ability to donate to charities without them having to give anything directly. It means Waterfox could carry on expanding and everyone gets to contribute to a good cause! Initially I’ll select the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the charity of the first month of release. In future releases I will be building functionality that will allow you to choose a charity of your own. So how is this going to work?

We’ve created our own search engine called Storm that you’ll be able to beta test in the coming weeks. The idea is simple; carry on doing what you always do! Search using the Storm as you normally do with any other search engine and when you do your shopping online and purchase something by searching for it via Waterfox search, various retailers have chosen to donate a certain amount of your basket to charity at no cost to you!

Does Waterfox get anything?

Section titled “Does Waterfox get anything?”

That depends on the charity! We’ve spoken to a lot of them and each one of them decides how much Waterfox gets.

How can we be certain the money will go to Charity?

Section titled “How can we be certain the money will go to Charity?”

The whole process is going to be transparent. It means that Waterfox has set up its own company, Waterfox Ltd. The payments to charity will be managed through an independent bank that holds the money in ESCROW, meaning that the charity will always be paid and no foul play occurs.

How can we trust the search engine?

Section titled “How can we trust the search engine?”

None of your personal information is kept (everything is anonymous). In fact, we don’t even ask for any (and none of your searches are stored anywhere)! The only thing that happens is that a cookie will be stored (it is not a tracking cookie as we follow EU law and if users don’t like a cookie being used we can find an alternative :-) ), which will hold the data for the charitable donation to be managed. That’s it!

That’s awesome! Where do I sign up?

Section titled “That’s awesome! Where do I sign up?”

Keep an eye out over the next few days to access a beta website to test out the search functionality and let us know what you think!

Does this mean Waterfox is turning into some big company?

Section titled “Does this mean Waterfox is turning into some big company?”

Not at all! I will still be the only person developing Waterfox, giving support and just generally hanging about the Waterfox subreddit and support thread over at Overclock.net. I’ve just gotten some extra help from a good company with noble intentions to help get this off the ground.

As you know, Waterfox has gotten quite big and costs to run it are quite high and I’ve been struggling to pay out of pocket so I thought it’s a great way to raise money for Waterfox without exploiting the community. Plus it’s opt out, meaning you’re not forced to use it and can carry on using whichever search engine you like.

I thought it’s a much better way to approach things, than say the way Mozilla are introducing sponsored tiles and the likes. Please let me know what you think!