Solaris build instructions

The Solaris port of VirtualBox is work in progress and so is this page. The current page is just an edited version of the GNU/Linux one.

Prerequisites

You need:

• Solaris Nevada build 70 and Solaris Developer Express 07/09 are the oldest versions VirtualBox can be expected to build on. Build 75 or later is strongly recommended.

• GCC 3.4.3+. It will probably work with 3.4.6 or even 4.x.y, but 3.4.3 is the one we've tried and which problems we have worked around.

• as86. This ships with Solaris and the VirtualBox source tree.
  The source: ​http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robert.debath/dev86/

• bcc (Bruce Evans C Compiler). This ships with Solaris and the VirtualBox source tree.
  The source: ​http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robert.debath/dev86/

• IASL (Intel ACPI compiler). This is currently included in the VirtualBox source tree.
  The source: ​http://www.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi/downloads.htm

• xsltproc (libxslt, XML style sheet processor). This ships with Solaris.
  The source: ​http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/downloads.html

• libIDL. This ships with Solaris.
  The source: ​http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/libIDL/

• libSDL 1.2.x. This ships with Solaris.
  The source: ​http://libsdl.org/download-1.2.php

• libXcursor (required to support color mouse pointers in guest). Included with Solaris starting with build 74. For earlier builds, you'll have to built it yourself.
  The source: ​http://ftp.x.org/pub/individual/lib/libXcursor-1.1.9.tar.bz2

• YASM 0.6.3+ or revision 2004+. This is currently included in the VirtualBox source tree.
  The source: ​http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/wiki/Download

• libxerces (only VBox version < 1.6, Xerces XML parser; the C++, not the Java version). You'll probably have to build this yourself or see check ¹.
  The source: ​http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-c/download.cgi

• libxalan (only VBox version < 1.6, Xalan XSL library, depends on Xerces; again, the C++, not the Java version). You'll probably have to build this yourself or see check ¹.
  The source: ​http://xml.apache.org/xalan-c/download.html

• libxml2 (only VBox version >= 1.6, XML file handling)

• libxslt1 (only VBox version >= 1.6, XML file transformation)

• Qt 3.3.x (with x >= 5 if possible; only for VBox version <= 2.2.0). You'll have to build this yourself.
  The source: ​ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/qt-x11-free-3.3.8.tar.bz2
  
  Make sure QTDIR environment variable is pointing to the Qt installation and that the shared libraries can be found.
  Configure example (not the -I options for odd include locations):

  ./configure -v -platform solaris-g++-64 -thread -shared -stl -largefile -tablet -sm -disable-sql \
      -qt-imgfmt-jpeg -qt-imgfmt-png -qt-imgfmt-mng -qt-libjpeg -qt-libpng -qt-libmng -qt-zlib \
      -prefix /opt/vboxose-qt \
      -I/usr/include \
      -I/usr/X11/include \
      -I/usr/X11/share/include \
      -I/usr/sfw/include
  

• Qt 4.x.y (with x >= 4 if possible)

• Doxygen 1.4.0+ - optional.
  ​http://www.sunfreeware.com/programlistintel10.html#doxygen

• TeTex 3.0+ - internal only².
  ​http://www.sunfreeware.com/programlistintel10.html#tetex

• Wget 1.10+ - internal only². Included with Solaris starting with build 76.
  ​http://www.sunfreeware.com/programlistintel10.html#wget

• The PATH has to include the following directories:
  • /usr/sfw/bin - for gcc and related tools.
  • /usr/ccs/bin - for ar and other tools.
  • /usr/local/teTeX/bin/i386-pc-solaris2.10 - TeTex, internal only².

• The LD_LIBRARY_PATH has to include the following directories:
  • /usr/sfw/lib - for gcc and related tools.
  • /usr/ccs/lib - for ar and other tools.

¹ The xerces and xalan sources we use together with the appropriate kBuild makefiles can be found here:
​http://virtualbox.org/download/testcase/xerces-and-xalan-vbox-src.tar.bz2
Untar them into the VirtualBox trunk directory and add --build-xalan as argument to configure whenever running it.

² Items marked "internal only" is intended for VirtualBox team members only.

Building VirtualBox

1. Change to the root directory of the sources and execute the configure script: ./configure --disable-hardening. If it finds everything it needs, it will create a file called 'AutoConfig.kmk' containing paths to the various tools on your system. Also, it will create an environment setup script called env.sh. This step only has to be done once (if something changes in your build tool setup, you might have to repeat it but keep in mind that both output files will be overwritten).

2. Whenever you want to build VirtualBox, you have to open a shell and source the generated environment setup script 'env.sh', i.e. do

   source ./env.sh
   

3. To build a release package, type kmk all. This produces the required binaries in out/solaris.x86/release/bin/. (If you want to build a debug version, type kmk BUILD_TYPE=debug.) In case you have more than one CPU core, you could take advantage of our parallel build system by supplying -j3 (number of cores + 1) as an option to kmk.

Running your build

You can run VirtualBox directly from the build target directory (out/solaris.x86/release/bin/). But first of all, you must install the VirtualBox kernel module. There is a script src/VBox/HostDrivers/Support/solaris/mod.sh which does this for you. It requires you to either install sudo or run it as root.

Or, you can do the following:

cd out/solaris.amd64/release/bin

You will need to copy the driver file and .conf file if any into the appropriate locations. Current drivers include vboxdrv (primary host driver), vboxflt (bridged networking, host-only networking), vboxnet (host-only networking), vboxusbmon, vboxusb (USB drivers).

/platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/       (32-bit drivers and .conf files)
/platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/amd64  (64-bit drivers)

And then run as root/sudo:

vboxconfig.sh --setupdrivers

The config script only loads drivers that are found in the appropriate locations (don't forget to copy the ".conf" files).

Finally, you can start one of the frontends, e.g.

./VirtualBox