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# Global instructions
Limit the amount of comments you put in the code to a strict minimum. You should almost never add comments, except sometimes on non-trivial code, function definitions if the arguments aren't self-explanatory, and class definitions and their members.
Do not remove existing comments unless they are directly related to what you are changing.
The Firefox repository is very big and so it isn't advised to blindly run grep or rg commands without specifying a narrow set of directories to search. There are tools available to help, see next section.
## Tooling for Firefox work
- Some tools useful for Firefox work are available in the `moz` MCP server
- Firefox is a very large repository, and it isn't efficient to search with usual tooling. When working on Firefox, you MUST use the `searchfox-cli` tool if you want to know about something. Its `--help` flag will show the options, but you probably want:
```
searchfox-cli --define 'AudioContext::AudioContext' # get function impl
searchfox-cli --define 'AudioSink' # get class definition
searchfox-cli --path ipdl -q 'MySearchTerm' # search for a text string, restrict on path
searchfox-cli --id AudioSink -l 150 --cpp # search for identifier audio sink in C++ code, 150 results max
```
- For C++, Rust and Java code, prefer searching for identifiers with `searchfox-cli`. Use text search restricted by path otherwise.
- Do not try to use identifier search for front-end identifiers like JS object or function names, CSS classes or HTML custom element names.
- `searchfox-cli`'s `--path` can only be provided once, but supports globs so you can combine a path with a file extension restriction.
- If you must use regular expressions with `searchfox-cli`, don't forget the `--regexp` flag.
- Use the `searchfox-cli` tool, only using `rg` or usual local tools if you need to find information about something
that has definitely changed locally. If you're unsure, ask.
- If you can't find something quickly, it is better to ask than run local searches.
- `./mach` is the main interface to the Mozilla build system and common developer tasks. Important commands are listed here, and you can run `./mach help` for a full list of commands. If you want additional details for a given command, you can run `./mach COMMAND --help`
- `./mach lint`: Run linters. Run it without additional parameters to lint all the files you have modified
- `./mach format`: Format code. Run it without additional parameters to format all the files you have modified
- `./mach build`: Build the project. Full builds can take a long time, up to tens of minutes.
- `./mach test --auto`: Run tests
- `./mach run`: Run the project
- `./mach doc --no-serve --no-open`: Build the documentation
- `treeherder-cli`: Pull CI results for a try push
- Use the MCP resource `@moz:bugzilla://bug/{bug_id}` to retrieve a bug
- Use the MCP resource `@moz:phabricator://revision/D{revision_id}` to retrieve a Phabricator revision
## Fixing review comments
Use `@moz:phabricator://revision/D{revision_id}` to retrieve the revision and its comments.
You can find the review identifier by inspecting the commit log with:
- `jj log -T builtin_log_detailed` if using `jj`
- `git log -v -l 10` if using git
## Code Style
- Our style guide forbids the use of emoji.
## Workflow
- After making code changes, ensure the code is formatted by using `./mach format`, linted by using `./mach lint`, and build it using `./mach build`. If there are no errors, you can use `mach run` to ensure the browser still runs. If you want to format specific files, use `./mach format path/to/modifiedfile path/to/othermodifiedfile`.
- You can run tests by using `./mach test --auto`. Once you are satisfied with the tests you run locally, use `mach try auto` to run tests in CI
- Ask if you should run a test. If you do, you probably want to run the test with `--headless`
- Do not perform commits yourself, ever
- When doing Android and Desktop front-end-only changes, use the special `./mach build faster` to skip all C++/Rust compilation.
- Conversely, for C++/Rust only changes you can use the special `./mach build binaries` to skip all front-end-related tasks.