Bug 1473054 - Add geckodriver build instructions to firefox-source-docs.m.o. r=me

MozReview-Commit-ID: F2sQ1FR1mbM

testing/geckodriver/doc/Building.md

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+Building geckodriver
+====================
+
+geckodriver is written in Rust, a systems programming language
+from Mozilla.  Crucially, it relies on the [webdriver crate] to
+provide the HTTPD and do most of the heavy lifting of marshalling
+the WebDriver protocol. geckodriver translates WebDriver [commands],
+[responses], and [errors] to the [Marionette protocol], and acts
+as a proxy between [WebDriver] and [Marionette].
+
+geckodriver is an optional build component when building Firefox,
+which means it is not built by default when invoking `./mach build`.
+To enable building of geckodriver, ensure to put this in your [mozconfig]:
+
+	ac_add_options --enable-geckodriver
+
+Because we use geckodriver in testing, particularly as part of the
+Web Platform Tests, it _is_ built by default in the [Firefox CI].
+A regular `-b do -p all -u none -t none` try syntax will build
+geckodriver on all the supported platforms.  The build will be part
+of the `B` task.
+
+If you use artifact builds you may also build geckodriver using cargo:
+
+	% cd testing/geckodriver
+	% cargo build
+	…
+	   Compiling geckodriver v0.21.0 (file:///home/ato/src/gecko/testing/geckodriver)
+	…
+	    Finished dev [optimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 7.83s
+
+Because all Rust code in central shares the same cargo workspace,
+the binary will be put in the `$(topsrcdir)/target` directory.
+
+[Rust]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
+[webdriver crate]: https://crates.io/crates/webdriver
+[commands]: https://docs.rs/webdriver/newest/webdriver/command/
+[responses]: https://docs.rs/webdriver/newest/webdriver/response/
+[errors]: https://docs.rs/webdriver/newest/webdriver/error/enum.ErrorStatus.html
+[Marionette protocol]: /testing/marionette/doc/marionette/Protocol.html
+[WebDriver]: https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/
+[Marionette]: /testing/marionette/doc/marionette
+[mozconfig]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Configuring_Build_Options
+[Firefox CI]: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/
+
+
+Making geckodriver part of the official build
+---------------------------------------------
+
+There is a long-term intention to include geckodriver as part of
+the regular Firefox build.
+
+When we migrated geckodriver from GitHub into central it was originally
+enabled by default in all local builds.  Since this was one of the
+very first Rust components to land in central, support for Rust was a
+little bit experimental and we discovered a couple of different problems:
+
+  (1) Not all developers had Rust installed, and support for Rust
+      in the tree was experimental.  This caused some compile
+      errors in particular on Windows, and at the time developers
+      were not happy with requiring Rust for building Firefox.
+
+  (2) The additional build time induced by including a fairly large
+      Rust component in the default build was considered too high.
+
+At the time of writing, Rust support in central has improved vastly.
+We also require Rust for regular Firefox builds, which addresses
+part of issue 1.
+
+Our working theory is that we now build so much Rust code in central
+that many of the dependencies geckodriver relies on and that takes
+up a lot of time to build will have been built as dependencies for
+other Rust components in the tree, effectively making the additional
+time it takes to build geckodriver less prominent than it was when
+we originally tried including it in the default build.
+
+This work is tracked as part of
+<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1471281>.

testing/geckodriver/doc/index.rst

@@ -25,4 +25,5 @@ For developers
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
 
+   Building.md
    Releasing.md