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buildingforriscosquickstart

Michael Drake edited this page Jan 5, 2026 · 1 revision

!meta title="Documentation/BuildingForRISCOSQuickStart" !meta author="Sprow" !meta date="2015-08-11T21:40:32Z"

!toc

Note:
Commands proceeded by # should be done as root
Commands proceeded by $ should be done as your normal user
Depending on how your system is configured you may need to log in as root, or you may be able to use sudo.

Building for the first time

Install Debian or Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine, such as Virtual Box or kvm.

Follow the rest of these instructions inside it.

An example guide for installing Debian in virtualbox on windows is linked here, however this is for Debian 6 but if followed current Debian (version 8) should be installed.

Get a copy of env.sh, which manages a build environment for you, and have it install the dependencies.

$ wget http://git.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/plain/docs/env.sh
# source env.sh
# ns-package-install

Download and install the latest arm-unknown-riscos toolchain from http://ci.netsurf-browser.org/builds/toolchains/

Note :
The pre-compiled toolchains are for x86_64 (64 bit x86 processors) and therefore require the Virtual Machine be installed 64Bit

$ wget http://ci.netsurf-browser.org/builds/toolchains/arm-unknown-riscos-34.tar.xz
# tar xvf arm-unknown-riscos-34.tar.xz -C /

Clone all the NetSurf repositories. This creates a workspace for you to work in, /home/yourname/dev-netsurf/workspace

$ TARGET_ABI=arm-unknown-riscos source env.sh
$ ns-clone

Build and install the libraries

$ ns-pull-install

Switch to your newly created NetSurf workspace

$ rm env.sh
$ cd ~/dev-netsurf/workspace
$ TARGET_ABI=arm-unknown-riscos source env.sh

Build NetSurf

$ cd netsurf
$ make TARGET=riscos

Zip up the build for transfer to your RISC OS machine

$ make TARGET=riscos package

You can alternatively use Sunfish to access your VM via NFS and run your build directly, but that is outside the scope of this document.

To confirm you're running what you just build, you can visit about:testament in NetSurf to view information about the build.

Updating and building again

Next time you come to build NetSurf, remember to execute this before working with the workspace:

$ TARGET_ABI=arm-unknown-riscos source env.sh

You can re-pull and re-install the libraries (to get the latest versions) by simply reexecuting this:

 $ ns-pull-install

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