Moonlight Accessibility

As part of their second phase, the Mono Accessibility team will be implementing full UIA support for Moonlight.

The following platforms will be supported using our plugin:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
• openSUSE 11.0
• openSUSE 11.1
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
• Fedora 10
• Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

For Developers

Building Firefox with Plugin Accessibility

• Install autoconf 2.13 (http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/mozilla/openSUSE_11.1/autoconf213.ymp)
• Install libnotify-devel
• Check out (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mozilla_Source_Code_(Mercurial)) Firefox from mozilla-1.9.2 (Firefox 3.6)
• Create a .mozconfig file from this template:

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig

ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser

mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/obj-debug
mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS=-j4

ac_add_options --enable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi

• Apply the latest plugin accessibility patch from uia2atk/MoonAtkBridge (http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/viewvc/trunk/uia2atk/MoonAtkBridge/patches/ff-plugin-a11y.patch) (Notice this patch is tracked in Mozilla Bug #480317 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=480317))
• Build for the first time:

make -f client.mk build

From now on, incremental build has been enabled. This will allow you to only build what has changed instead of the entire project, saving hours of time. To use this, simply change directory into obj-debug/FolderYouChanged and type make.

If I changed something in the accessible/ directory, I would:

cd obj-debug/accessible/
make

Development with Firefox

If you find yourself in the position of maintaining a patch against Firefox for a long time, Mercurial can be your best friend.

When you get to a good stopping point, hg commit your code, and continue working as normal.

Sooner or later, you'll have to pull in the latest changes from HEAD into your branch. To make this easier, enable the Mercurial rebase plugin by putting

[extensions]
hgext.rebase = 

into your ~/.hgrc file.

Now, to update your local repository:

brad@blackbird:~/build/firefox-trunk$ hg pull
pulling from http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/
searching for changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 76 changesets with 276 changes to 228 files (+1 heads)
(run 'hg heads' to see heads, 'hg merge' to merge)
brad@blackbird:~/build/firefox-trunk$ hg rebase
merging accessible/src/atk/Makefile.in
merging accessible/src/base/nsAccessibilityService.cpp
merging accessible/src/base/nsAccessibilityService.cpp
warning: conflicts during merge.
merging accessible/src/base/nsAccessibilityService.cpp failed!
abort: fix unresolved conflicts with hg resolve then run hg rebase --continue
...
  Resolve any conflicts...
...
brad@blackbird:~/build/firefox-trunk$ hg rebase --continue
saving bundle to /home/brad/build/firefox-trunk/.hg/strip-backup/b67e49ad7fa4-temp
adding branch
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 81 changesets with 292 changes to 232 files
rebase completed
brad@blackbird:~/build/firefox-trunk$

Setting up your Moonlight Environment

Supplies

• Matching versions of mono, mcs, and moon from trunk
• A checkout of uia2atk from trunk
• Firefox trunk with plugin patch applied (see above)
• An hour, a good (http://icanhascheezburger.com) build-time (http://thedailykitten.com/) distraction (http://youlooknicetoday.com) and a tall glass of water

Setting up the Base Environment

• Set up a development profile in Firefox

firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager

Press the Create Profile button. Set the profile name to dev and the path to ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles-dev.

• Create an alias to the development version of Firefox

alias ffd='$HOME/build/firefox-trunk/obj-debug/dist/bin/firefox -no-remote -P dev'

• Build mono (and mcs).

cd mono/
./autogen.sh --prefix=/path/to/my/prefix
make && make install

• Patch moon with all of our pending patches:

cd moon/
patch -p0 < ~/path/to/uia2atk/MoonAtkBridge/patches/moonlight-a11y-slot-tree.diff
..

• Configure moon

cd moon/
./autogen.sh --prefix=/path/to/my/prefix --with-mcspath=$HOME/src/mono-2-6/mcs --with-mono-basic-path=$HOME/src/mono-2-6/mono-basic

Make sure that ./autogen.sh's output looks something like

  Silverlight Support:
        Silverlight 1.0: yes
        Silverlight 2.0: yes
          Browser plugin assemblies: yes 
            Path to mcs tree: ./../mcs
            Path to mono-basic tree: no
          Desktop application assemblies: yes 

  Browser Support:
        Firefox: yes
          Plugin Installer (.xpi): yes
          Gecko 1.8 (Firefox 2): no (reason: missing FF2 development packages)
          Gecko 1.9 (Firefox 3): yes

• Build moon

make && make install

• Build moon XPI file

make user-plugin

• Install Moon XPI into Firefox

ffd plugin/install/novell-moonlight.xpi

If you're making changes to Moonlight, you'll often have to:

make && rm plugin/install/novell-moonlight.xpi && make user-plugin
ffd plugin/install/novell-moonlight.xpi

Setting up the MoonAtkBridge Environment

• Configure and build MoonAtkBridge

cd uia2atk/MoonAtkBridge
./autogen.sh --prefix=/home/brad/mono
make

This will create a stage/ directory containing all of the files required for a Firefox extension. We could make and install an XPI right away with make xpi, but for development, it's much easier if we just symlink this directory into our Mozilla plugins folder:

 cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles-dev/extensions/
 ln -s /path/to/uia2atk/MoonAtkBridge/stage moonlight-a11y@novell.com

Now, when you run Firefox, our extension should load and you should be able to see a live accessibility hierarchy inside of Accerciser.

When developing in MoonAtkBridge, just make after you make changes, and re-run Firefox to see the results.

Also, don't forget to make sure stage/active.xml is true, i.e., the content is: <root><active>true</active></root>, by default is false.