How to make Firefox builds¹ 17% faster²

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the previous post, I mentioned that buildcache has some unique properties compared to ccache and sccache. One of them is its Lua plugin system, which lets you write custom wrappers for programs that aren’t compilers in the traditional sense. With Bug 2027655 now merged, we can use this to cache Firefox’s WebIDL binding code generation.

What’s the WebIDL step?

When you build Firefox, one of the earlier steps runs python3 -m mozbuild.action.webidl to generate C++ binding code from hundreds of .webidl files. It produces thousands of output files: headers, cpp files, forward declarations, event implementations, and so on. The step isn’t terribly slow on its own, but it runs on every clobber build, and the output is entirely deterministic given the same inputs. That makes it a perfect candidate for caching.

The problem was that the compiler cache was never passed to this step. Buildcache was only wrapping actual compiler invocations, not the Python codegen.

The change

The fix in Bug 2027655 is small. In dom/bindings/Makefile.in, we now conditionally pass $(CCACHE) as a command wrapper to the py_action call:

WEBIDL_CCACHE=
ifdef MOZ_USING_BUILDCACHE
WEBIDL_CCACHE=$(CCACHE)
endif

webidl.stub: $(codegen_dependencies)
	$(call py_action,webidl $(relativesrcdir),$(srcdir),,$(WEBIDL_CCACHE))
	@$(TOUCH) $@

The py_action macro in config/makefiles/functions.mk is what runs Python build actions. The ability to pass a command wrapper as a fourth argument was also introduced in this bug. When buildcache is configured as the compiler cache, this means the webidl action is invoked as buildcache python3 -m mozbuild.action.webidl ... instead of just python3 -m mozbuild.action.webidl .... That’s all buildcache needs to intercept it.

Note the ifdef MOZ_USING_BUILDCACHE guard. This is specific to buildcache because ccache and sccache don’t have a mechanism for caching arbitrary commands. Buildcache does, through its Lua wrappers.

The Lua wrapper

Buildcache’s Lua plugin system lets you write a script that tells it how to handle a program it doesn’t natively understand. The wrapper for WebIDL codegen, webidl.lua, needs to answer a few questions for buildcache:

Can I handle this command? Match on mozbuild.action.webidl in the argument list.
What are the inputs? All the .webidl source files, plus the Python codegen scripts. These come from file-lists.json (which mach generates) and codegen.json (which tracks the Python dependencies from the previous run).
What are the outputs? All the generated binding headers, cpp files, event files, and the codegen state files. Again derived from file-lists.json.

With that information, buildcache can hash the inputs, check the cache, and either replay the cached outputs or run the real command and store the results.

The wrapper uses buildcache’s direct_mode capability, meaning it hashes input files directly rather than relying on preprocessed output. This is the right approach here since we’re not dealing with a C preprocessor but with a Python script that reads .webidl files.

Numbers

Here are build times for ./mach build on Linux, comparing compiler cachers. Each row shows a clobber build with an empty cache (cold), followed by a clobber build with a filled cache (warm):

tool	cold	warm	with plugin
none	5m35s	n/a	n/a
ccache	5m42s	3m21s	n/a
sccache	9m38s	2m49s	n/a
buildcache	5m43s	1m27s	1m12s

The “with plugin” column is buildcache with the webidl.lua wrapper active. It shaves another 15 seconds¹, bringing the total down to 1m12s². Not a revolutionary improvement on its own, but it demonstrates the mechanism. The WebIDL step is just the first Python action to get this treatment; there are other codegen steps in the build that could benefit from the same approach.

More broadly, these numbers show buildcache pulling well ahead on warm builds. Going from a 5m35s clean build to a 1m12s cached rebuild is a nice improvement to the edit-compile-test cycle.

These are single runs on one machine, not rigorous benchmarks, but the direction is clear enough.

Setting it up

If you’re already using buildcache with mach, the Makefile change is available when updating to today’s central. To enable the Lua wrapper, clone the buildcache-wrappers repo and point buildcache at it via lua_paths in ~/.buildcache/config.json:

{
"lua_paths": ["/path/to/buildcache-wrappers/mozilla"],
"max_cache_size": 10737418240,
"max_local_entry_size": 2684354560
}

Alternatively, you can set the BUILDCACHE_LUA_PATH environment variable. A convenient place to do that is in your mozconfig:

mk_add_options "export BUILDCACHE_LUA_PATH=/path/to/buildcache-wrappers/mozilla/"

The large max_local_entry_size (2.5 GB) is needed because some Rust crates produce very large cache entries.

What’s next

The Lua plugin system is the interesting part here. The WebIDL wrapper is a proof of concept, but the same technique applies to any deterministic build step that takes known inputs and produces known outputs. There are other codegen actions in the Firefox build that could get the same treatment, and I plan to explore those next.

Notes

For a clobber build with a warm cache ↩
On my machine ↩

BuildCache now works with mach

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m happy to announce that buildcache is now a first-class compiler cache in mach. This has been a long time coming, and I’m excited to finally see it land.

For those unfamiliar, buildcache is a compiler cache that can drastically cut down your rebuild times by caching compilation results. It’s similar to ccache, but even more so sccache, in that it supports C/C++ out of the box, as well as Rust. It has some nice unique properties of its own though, which we’ll look at more closely in following posts.

Getting started

Setting it up is straightforward. Just add the following to your mozconfig:

ac_add_options --with-ccache=buildcache

Then build as usual:

./mach build

That’s it.

Give it a try

If you run into any issues, please file a bug and tag me. I’d love to hear how it works out for people, and any rough edges you might hit.

hobby — farre's blog

How to make Firefox builds1 17% faster2