DTrace has aroused a big buzz in the community. This neat tool provides a powerful infrastructure for dynamic tracing. DTrace ships some built-in probes, vminfo, sysinfo, proc, io etc; furthermore, the DTrace facilitates the developers to plugin customized static probes as well. DTrace meets Javascript (screenshot), is the initial effort to embrace DTrace in Javascript community.

Install OpenSolaris

There are a bunch of OpenSolaris distribution projects actively developed. I chose NexentaOS since it is characterized as the synergy of the OpenSolaris and GNU softwares. The installation is quite smooth since I am using the VMWare image, just copy, launch, and you get a Ubuntu-like desktop. The network adapter works out of the box.

Install GCC

It is quite annoying that Ubuntu-derived distribution does not include GCC as the base. But you can install it anyway.

Build the Mozilla Firefox

Download the source code for Mozilla Firefox you are using, in my case, i.e Firefox-1.5.0.7. I manually adapt the modification from Helper Monkey, augment the Makefile.in to add the new files, (patch). After 2 hours struggling, and I googled the web and found Ticket #405. Oops!

Ok, let met ry to install Sun Studio 11 on Nexenta. No luck at all, the installer hides the detailed error message, what I could find is the Java I/O exceptions. If I were more experienced OpenSolaris user, I might find a way to solve this problem.

That is the day one, I would rather try the official OpenSolaris Express Developer Edition tomorrow.