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description This page has all the information you need to get your Windows development environment set up and ready to hack on Thunderbird.

Windows Build Prerequisites

The Basics

64-bit Windows

You will need to be running a 64-bit version of Windows in order to build Thunderbird. To check this in Windows 10, open the start menu and click on the gear icon on the left-hand side of the menu. This will open up the "settings" window. Click on the "System" option and then scroll down to "About". Click on the "About" option and on the new screen next to "System Type" you should see: "64-bit operating system"

How System type appears in the About Settings page.

Visual Studio

In order to get the necessary libraries in order to build Thunderbird, you will need to install Visual Studio - an IDE from Microsoft. Download the free community edition here.

During installation make sure the following workloads are checked:

  • "Desktop development with C++"
  • "Game development with C++"

MozillaBuild Package

Finally, download the MozillaBuild Package from Mozilla. Accept the default settings, in particular the default installation directory: c:\mozilla-build\. On some versions of Windows an error dialog will give you the option to ‘reinstall with the correct settings’ - you should agree and proceed.

{% hint style="info" %} Once this is done, creating a shortcut to c:\mozilla-build\start-shell.bat on your desktop will make your life easier. {% endhint %}

{% hint style="success" %} NOTE: You will need to run the start-shell.bat to open up the shell and perform the commands listed in other parts of this guide. {% endhint %}

Getting the Code

Once you have run start-shell.bat, you will need to grab the source code if you haven't already.

The latest Firefox and Thunderbird source code is available from the main branches of the firefox and thunderbird-desktop Git repositories, respectively.

When building locally:

  • The root of the Firefox source is often renamed to source/ but it can be named anything you like.
  • The root of the Thunderbird source needs to be placed inside the Firefox source code, in a directory that must be named comm/.
git clone https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox source/
cd source/
git clone https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-desktop comm/

Mach Bootstrap

In the source directory run the following command to get additional dependencies needed to install Thunderbird:

./mach bootstrap

You will be presented with the following options:

Please choose the version of Firefox you want to build:
  1. Firefox for Desktop Artifact Mode
  2. Firefox for Desktop
  3. GeckoView/Firefox for Android Artifact Mode
  4. GeckoView/Firefox for Android

Please choose option 2 to proceed with a successful build.

This action will install all the remaining libraries and dependencies necessary to build Thunderbird locally.

{% hint style="danger" %} Make sure to restart after installing all the requirements, or Thunderbird might encounter a build error. {% endhint %}

Building Thunderbird

Now that you have the prerequisites for Windows, make sure you have the source code via the commands on the "Setting up a build environment" page:

{% page-ref page="../setting-up-a-build-environment.md" %}

Then you can follow the instructions on the Building Thunderbird page:

{% page-ref page="./" %}