Right now if you're just touching browser.js, the rebuild/test cycle for Fennec is pretty bad. We should figure out a way to make this suck less. For one, we might be able to add a special make target that rebuilds only what's needed, instead of doing a full top-level rebuild or knowing the voodoo about which directories to make in. Additionally, if we can figure out a way to short-circuit the "make package" cycle for front-end changes, that would help quite a bit.

(In reply to Ted Mielczarek [:ted] from comment #0) > Right now if you're just touching browser.js, the rebuild/test cycle for > Fennec is pretty bad. We should figure out a way to make this suck less. Proper dependencies to build java code would help significantly. > For one, we might be able to add a special make target that rebuilds only > what's needed, instead of doing a full top-level rebuild or knowing the > voodoo about which directories to make in. > > Additionally, if we can figure out a way to short-circuit the "make package" > cycle for front-end changes, that would help quite a bit. You can't really escape make package, since you need the omnijar and the apk created. Now, if we had an actual omnijar chrome-format, instead of using flat, we could create the omnijar that way, push it on the device, and have fennec load it instead of what it has in the apk.

14:35 < glandium> check with the #mobile people 14:35 < glandium> iirc the options are -appomni and -greomni or something like that 14:36 < glandium> yeah that's it. it should work with -greomni only 14:39 <@ted> hmm! 14:40 < glandium> ted: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/GeckoAppShell.java#446 14:41 < glandium> and it's possible that just adding the args through --es args on am start command line would work

There's also this startupcache issue, which sucks: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Fennec/Android#Partial_Builds:_Beware_the_startup_cache.21 If you don't do a full rebuild, you don't get a new BuildID, so the startupcache doesn't get invalidated, so your chrome changes don't show up.

Note, on fennec, the timestamp of the apk is pretty reliable to know whether it's a new build or not.

This looks like too much work for the moment. Not being able to rebuild the omnijar without repackaging is the biggest pain.