These are some very simple instruction for compiling Mozilla Firefox. Why are they simple? Because that's all that's required. It's a short process and a lot simpler than anyone makes out. While it is short, it could be a lot shorter still.

If you want pre-compiled binaries, have a look at: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/contrib/latest-trunk/. FreeBSD nightly builds are availible there also.

I have a Unix shell script which creates the .mozconfig, does the compile, and can create distribution tarballs if you wish it. it is availible at: http://silverwraith.com/papers/buildmoz.sh

Downloading and compiling the source code

Use these commands on your unix shell to build Phoenix:

• Put these lines into a file called '.mozconfig' in your home directory:
  MOZ_PHOENIX=1
BUILD_OFFICIAL=1
export MOZ_PHOENIX
export BUILD_OFFICIAL
mk_add_options MOZ_PHOENIX=1
mk_add_options BUILD_OFFICIAL=1
ac_add_options --prefix=/usr/local/firefox
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews
ac_add_options --disable-composer
ac_add_options --disable-calendar
ac_add_options --disable-xinerama
ac_add_options --disable-ctl
ac_add_options --disable-mathml
ac_add_options --disable-ldap
ac_add_options --disable-ldap-experimental
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews
ac_add_options --disable-js-ultrasparc
ac_add_options --disable-gtktest
ac_add_options --disable-shared
ac_add_options --enable-static
ac_add_options --enable-crypto
ac_add_options --enable-optimize="-O2 -funroll-loops -ffast-math -fschedule-insns2 -fexpensive-optimizations"
  
  There are other options, but these are the the ones I normally set. You can add any option supplied to ./configure into the .mozconfig file. You can also change --disable to --enable if you wish to enable a component that I have disabled.
• cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot checkout mozilla/client.mk
• cd mozilla
• make -f client.mk
  (if your system, like FreeBSD, has 'gmake', use: gmake -f client.mk)

This will download all the sources from the Mozilla CVS server, and compile it to make Phoenix. It will put the compile sources in mozilla/dist.
Once that is done, you need to build a distribution tarball using the instructions below.

Building a distribution tarball

This involves a few more steps than it should have to, but hopefully this will be cleared up as soon as Firefox becomes the main Mozilla browser.
First we need edit mozilla/xpinstall/packager/Makefile and replace all occurances of mozilla-bin with firefox-bin

Now, cd mozilla/xpinstall/packager and run: MOZ_PKG_APPNAME=firefox make
This will create a tarball of Firefox and put it in: mozilla/dist. On my system, the tarball is called: firefox-i386-unknown-freebsd4.8.tar.gz

Installing your compiled Firefox

Once you have created the tarball using the instructions above, installing is very simple. The tarball extracts all the files into a directory called "firefox".
Change to the directory under which you wish to create the firefox directory. I like to use /usr/local
Then run: tar -zxvf <path to tarball>
The firefox executable should be availible as firefox/firefox.