I2P Browser source directory overview

This article provides an overview of what the various directories in the ​I2P Browser source code directories contains.

The code for all projects in the Mozilla family (such as Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) is combined into a single source tree. The tree contains the source code as well as the code required to build each project on supported platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS, etc). This document describes the directory structure that can be pulled by client.mk — i.e., directories that are used by at least some of the Mozilla project's client products. There are other directories in the Mozilla CVS repository, such as those for Web tools and those for the Classic codebase.

Root directory

.cargo

Configuration files for the Cargo package manager.

.vscode

Configuration files used by the Visual Studio Code IDE when working in the mozilla-central tree.

accessible

Files for accessibility (i.e., MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility), ATK (Accessibility Toolkit, used by GTK+ 2) support files).

addon-sdk

The add-on SDK for creating Firefox add-ons using standard Web Technologies.

browser

Contains the front end code (in XUL, Javascript, XBL, and C++) for the Firefox browser. Many of these files started off as a copy of files in xpfe/.

browser/extensions

Contains PDF.js and Shumway built-in extensions.

browser/themes

Contains images and CSS files to skin the browser for each OS (Linux, Mac and Windows)

build

This contains scripts (usually Perl) and programs used by the Mozilla build team for building and managing the Mozilla code base. These programs coordinate the running of makefiles and the creation of the dist directory.

caps

Capability-based web page security management. It contains C++ interfaces and code for determining the capabilities of content based on the security settings or certificates (e.g., VeriSign?).

chrome

Chrome registry used with toolkit/. These files were originally copies of files in rdf/chrome/ (SeaMonkey? still uses these).

config

More files used by the build process, common includes for the makefiles, etc.

db

Container for database-accessing modules. It is used to store mail box data, news data and global history data. It has not been updated to support XPCOM yet. This code originated in the Mozilla Classic code base.

db/sqlite3

The SQLite database, used by storage.

devtools

The Firefox Developer Tools server and client components.

docshell

Implementation of the docshell, the main object managing things related to a document window. Each frame has its own docshell. It contains methods for loading URIs, managing URI content listeners, etc. It is the outermost layer of the embedding API used to embed a Gecko browser into an application.

dom

IDL definitions of the interfaces defined by the DOM specifications and Mozilla extensions to those interfaces (implementations of these interfaces are primarily, but not completely, in content/). The parts of the connection between JavaScript? and the implementations of DOM objects that are specific both to JavaScript? and to the DOM. (The parts that are not DOM-specific, i.e., the generic binding between XPCOM and JavaScript?, live in js/src/xpconnect/.) Implementations of a few of the core "DOM Level 0" objects, such as window, window.navigator, window.location, etc.

editor

The editor directory contains C++ interfaces, C++ code, and XUL/Javascript for the embeddable editor component, which is used for the HTML Editor("Composer"), for plain and HTML mail composition, and for text fields and text areas throughout the product. The editor is designed like a "browser window with editing features": it adds some special classes for editing text and managing transaction undo/redo, but reuses browser code for nearly everything else.

Contains:

The backend for HTML and text editing. This is not only used for the mail composer and the page editor composer, but also for rich text editing inside webpages. Textarea and input fields are using such an editor as well (in the plaintext variant). The frontend for the HTML editor that is part of SeaMonkey?. embedding This directory contains IDL, headers, and support files needed in order to embed Gecko in applications.

extensions

Contains several extensions to mozilla, which can be enabled at compile-time using the —enable-extensions configure argument.

Note that some of these are now built specially and not using the —enable-extensions option. For example, disabling xmlextras is done using —disable-xmlextras.

extensions/auth

Implementation of the negotiate auth method for HTTP and other protocols. Has code for SSPI, GSSAPI, etc.

extensions/cookie

Permissions backend for cookies, images, etc., as well as the user interface to these permissions and other cookie features.

extensions/pref

Preference-related extensions.

extensions/spellcheck

Spellchecker for mailnews and composer.

extensions/universalchardet

Detects the character encoding of text.

gfx

Contains interfaces that abstract the capabilities of platform specific graphics toolkits, along with implementations on various platforms. These interfaces provide methods for things like drawing images, text, and basic shapes. It also contains basic data structures such as points and rectangles used here and in other parts of Mozilla.

It is also the home of the new graphics architecture based on cairo (via a C++ wrapper called thebes).

gradle

Containing files related to a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) build system.

hal

Contains platform specified functions (e.g. obtaining battery status, sensor information, memory information, Android alarms/vibrate/notifications/orientation, etc)

image

Image rendering library. Contains decoders for the image formats mozilla supports.

intl

Internationalization and localization support.

intl/chardet

Code for "sniffing" the character encoding of Web pages.

intl/locale

Code related to determination of locale information from the operating environment.

intl/lwbrk

Code related to line breaking and word breaking.

intl/strres

Code related to string resources used for localization.

intl/uconv

Code that converts (both ways: encoders and decoders) between UTF-16 and many other character encodings.

intl/unicharutil

Code related to implementation of various algorithms for Unicode text, such as case conversion.

ipc

Container for implementations of IPC (Inter-Process Communication).

js

js/src The JavaScript? engine, also known as SpiderMonkey?.

js/xpconnect

Support code for calling JavaScript? code from C++ code and C++ code from JavaScript? code, using XPCOM interfaces.

layout

Code that implements a tree of rendering objects that describe the types and locations of the objects that are displayed on the screen (such as CSS boxes, tables, form controls, XUL boxes, etc.), and code that manages operations over that rendering tree (such as creating and destroying it, doing layout, painting, and event handling).

layout/base

Code that deals with the rendering tree.

layout/forms

Rendering tree objects for HTML form controls.

layout/generic

The basic rendering object interface and the rendering tree objects for basic CSS boxes.

layout/mathml

Rendering tree objects for MathML.

layout/svg

Rendering tree objects for SVG.

layout/tables

Rendering tree objects for CSS/HTML tables.

layout/xul

Additional rendering object interfaces for XUL and the rendering tree objects for XUL boxes.

media

Contains sources of used media libraries for example libpng.

memory

Cross-platform wrappers for memallocs functions etc.

mfbt

Implementations of classes like WeakPtr?. Multi-platform assertions etc. More on MFBT

mobile

mobile/android

Firefox for Android

modules

Compression/Archiving?, math library, font (and font compression), Preferences Library. It contains code for handling various image formats (e.g. .PNG, .GIF), allowing drop-in Java virtual machines (called OJI, for "Open Java Interface"), supporting plug-ins and reading various compression formats (e.g. JAR, ZIP, ZLIB). This code originated from Mozilla as well as various different companies and individual people.

modules/libjar

Code to read zip files, used for reading the .jar files that contain the files for the mozilla frontend.

modules/libpref

Library for reading and writing preferences.

modules/zlib

Source code of zlib, used at least in the networking library for compressed transfers.

mozglue

Glue library containing various low-level functionality, including a dynamic linker for Android, a DLL block list for Windows, etc.

netwerk

Networking library, also known as Necko. Responsible for doing actual transfers from and to servers, as well as for URI handling and related stuff.

nsprpub

Netscape Portable Runtime. Used as an abstraction layer to things like threads, file I/O, and socket I/O. The "C" Runtime Library contains basic non-visual C functions to allocate and deallocate memory, get the time and date, read and write files, handle threads and handling and compare strings across all platforms. This code is also known by the name, "nspr" and "Netscape Portable Runtime". This code originated in Mozilla Classic.

nsprpub/lib

Mostly unused; might be used on Mac?

other-licenses

Contains libraries that are not covered by the MPL but are used in some mozilla code.

parser

Group of structures and functions needed to parse files based on XML/HTML.

parser/expat

Copy of the expat source code, which is the XML parser used by mozilla.

parser/html

The HTML parser (for everything except about:blank).

parser/htmlparser

The legacy HTML parser that's still used for about:blank. Parts of it are also used for managing the conversion of the network bytestream into Unicode in the XML parsing case.

parser/xml

The code for integrating expat (from parser/expat) into Gecko.

probes

Files related to dtrace.

python

Cross module python code.

python/mach

The code for the Mach building tool.

rdf

RDF handling APIs. Also contains the chrome registry code used by SeaMonkey?, although toolkit apps (such as Firefox and Thunderbird) use the copy forked into chrome. RDF stands for "Resource Description Framework" which is an open standard. This code reads and writes data from and to the local file system, databases, the Internet or any other source using a URL-like syntax.

security

Contains NSS and PSM, to support cryptographic functions in mozilla (like S/MIME, SSL, etc).

services

Firefox accounts and sync (history, preferences, tabs, bookmarks, telemetry, startup time, which addons are installed, etc).

servo

Servo, the parallel browser engine project.

startupcache

XXX this needs a description.

storage

Storage: XPCOM wrapper for sqlite. Wants to unify storage of all profile-related data. Supersedes mork.

taskcluster

Scripts and code to automatically build and test Mozilla trees for the continuous integration and release process.

testing

Common testing tools for mozilla codebase projects, test suite definitions for automated test runs, tests that don't fit anywhere else, and other fun stuff.

third_party

Vendored dependencies maintained outside of Mozilla.

toolkit

The "new toolkit" used by Thunderbird, Firefox, etc. This contains numerous front-end components shared between applications as well as most of the XBL-implemented parts of the XUL language (most of which was originally forked from versions in xpfe/).

toolkit/mozapps/extensions/test/xpinstall

The installer, which contains code for installing Mozilla and for installing XPIs/extensions. This directory also contains code needed to build installer packages.

tools

Some tools which are optionally built during the mozilla build process, mostly used for debugging.

uriloader

uriloader contains C interfaces and code for invoking the correct viewer for the content contained at a certain URL. For example, if this code determines that the content is a mail message, it looks up the appropriate listener (probably Netscape Messenger) and passes the mail message to it for display. It is generic and can hand the content off to internal components (like Messenger), to plug-ins or helper apps.

uriloader/base

Content dispatch in Mozilla. Used to load uris and find an appropriate content listener for the data. Also manages web progress notifications.

uriloader/exthandler

Used to handle content that Mozilla can't handle itself. Responsible for showing the helper app dialog, and generally for finding information about helper applications.

uriloader/prefetch

Service to prefetch documents in order to have them cached for faster loading.

view

View manager. Contains cross-platform code used for painting, scrolling, event handling, z-ordering, and opacity. Soon to become obsolete, gradually.

widget

A cross-platform API, with implementations on each platform, for dealing with operating system/environment widgets, i.e., code related to creation and handling of windows, popups, and other native widgets and to converting the system's messages related to painting and events into the messages used by other parts of Mozilla (e.g., view/ and content/, the latter of which converts many of the messages to yet another API, the DOM event API).

xpcom

Cross-Platform Component Object Model. Also contains data structures used by the rest of the mozilla code. XPCOM is the mechanism that allows Mozilla to export interfaces and have them automatically available to JavaScript? scripts, to Microsoft COM and to regular Mozilla C code. Some low-level XPCOM classes and interfaces are also defined here (e.g. the event loop for all platforms). XPCOM is compatible and very similar to Microsoft COM (although XPCOM is cross-platform).

xpfe

XPFE (Cross Platform Front End) is the SeaMonkey? frontend. It contains the XUL files for the browser interface, common files used by the other parts of the mozilla suite, and the XBL files for the parts of the XUL language that are implemented in XBL. Much of this code has been copied to browser/ and toolkit/ for use in Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

xpfe/components

Components used by the Mozilla frontend, as well as implementations of interfaces that other parts of mozilla expect.

content

The data structures that represent the structure of Web pages (HTML, SVG, XML documents, elements, text nodes, etc.) These objects contain the implementation of many DOM interfaces and also implement some behaviors associated with those objects, such as link handling, form control behavior, and form submission.

This directory also contains the code for XUL, XBL, XTF, <canvas>, as well as the code implementing XSLT and event handling.

extensions

extensions/content-packs

Content- and locale-pack switching user interface.

extensions/cview

Component viewer, which allows to view the currently registered components and interfaces.

extensions/datetime ====

Support for the datetime provtocol.

extensions/finger

Support for the finger protocol.

extensions/gnomevfs

Interface to gnome-vfs to allow using all protocols supported by gnome-vfs inside of mozilla.

extensions/help

Help viewer and help content.

extensions/irc

This is ChatZilla?, the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) component.

extensions/java

XPCOM↔Java bridge ("JavaXPCOM", formerly known as Javaconnect). Unrelated to the code in java/.

extensions/layout-debug

Layout debugger. Intended as replacement for "viewer". Can be used to run layout regression tests and has support for other layout debugging features.

extensions/lightning

The Lightning project, "an extension to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird."

extensions/mono

A two-way bridge between the CLR/.NET/Mono/C#/etc. world and XPCOM.

extensions/p3p

Implementation of W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences standard.

extensions/python

Support for implementing XPCOM components in python.

extensions/reporter

An extension to report problems with web pages. Client-side part.

extension/schema-validation

Allows to validate XML trees according to specified XML Schemas.

extension/spatialnavigation

Spatial navigation, navigating between links of a document according to their on-screen position.

extensions/sql

Support for accessing SQL databases from XUL applications.

extensions/sroaming

Session roaming, i.e. support for storing a profile on a remote server.

extensions/transformiix

XSLT support. XSL Transformations is a language used to transform XML documents into other XML documents.

extensions/tridentprofile

Support for importing profiles from MSIE.

extensions/typeaheadfind

Find As You Type allows quick web page navigation when you type a succession of characters in the body of the displayed page.

extensions/universalchardet

Universal character set detector.

extensions/venkman

The JavaScript? Debugger.

extensions/wallet

Password and Form Manager.

extensions/webdav

WebDAV code; exposes special APIs for accessing WebDAV servers. Used by the Calendar project.

extensions/webservices

Support for Webservices.

extensions/xforms

Code for the XForms extension.

extensions/xmlextras

Several XML-related extensions.

extensions/xml-rpc

XML Remote Procedure Calls. Unowned these days.

extensions/xmlterm

XMLTerm, a terminal implemented using mozilla technology. Only available on GTK builds.

intl

intl/ctl

Code for dealing with Complex Text Layout, related to shaping of south Asian languages (not built by default, needs —enable-ctl).

profile

Code for profile handling, the profile manager backend and frontend.

xulrunner

Code for XULRunner.