Easy to follow steps for building Thunderbird on Ubuntu

1. Install cvs:

sudo apt-get install cvs

2. Installing build tools:

sudo apt-get build-dep thunderbird
sudo apt-get install mercurial libasound2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libnotify-dev

3. To get autoconf version 2.13:

wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.13.tar.gz
tar -xvzf autoconf-2.13.tar.gz
cd autoconf-2.13/
./configure --program-suffix=2.13
make
sudo make install

4. Get the source:

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/
cd comm-central
python client.py checkout

5. To get missing packages such as mesa or header files such as iwlib.h:

sudo apt-get install mesa-common-dev libiw-dev

6. Create an empty file in comm-central directory and rename it to ".mozconfig"

7. Add the following lines in the ".mozconfig" file:

ac_add_options --enable-application=mail
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/objdir-tb-release
mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"

8. Start the build:

make -f client.mk

It worked for me !!!, I tried to make it as easy as possible without any descriptions for my colleagues who don’t want to get into details of the build :), but if you want to ask about anything just post a comment and I hope that I can help you. Also I would like to thank Eng. Mina Metias for his post about building Thunderbird.

Note: It takes time to download the source code.