There are instructions for other platforms linked from the get the code page.
Are you a Google employee? See go/building-chrome instead.
depot_toolsClone the depot_tools repository:
$ git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
Add depot_tools to the end of your PATH (you will probably want to put this in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc). Assuming you cloned depot_tools to /path/to/depot_tools:
$ export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/depot_tools"
Create a chromium directory for the checkout and change to it (you can call this whatever you like and put it wherever you like, as long as the full path has no spaces):
$ mkdir chromium && cd chromium
Run the fetch tool from depot_tools to check out the code and its dependencies.
$ fetch ios
If you don't want the full repo history, you can save a lot of time by adding the --no-history flag to fetch.
Expect the command to take 30 minutes on even a fast connection, and many hours on slower ones.
When fetch completes, it will have created a hidden .gclient file and a directory called src in the working directory. The remaining instructions assume you have switched to the src directory:
$ cd src
Optional: You can also install API keys if you want your build to talk to some Google services, but this is not necessary for most development and testing purposes.
Since the iOS build is a bit more complicated than a desktop build, we provide ios/build/tools/setup-gn.py, which will create four appropriately configured build directories under out for Release and Debug device and simulator builds, and generates an appropriate Xcode project (out/build/all.xcodeproj) as well.
More information about developing with Xcode. Xcode project is an artifact, any changes made in the project itself will be ignored.
You can customize the build by editing the file $HOME/.setup-gn (create it if it does not exist). Look at src/ios/build/tools/setup-gn.config for available configuration options.
From this point, you can either build from Xcode or from the command line using autoninja. setup-gn.py creates sub-directories named out/${configuration}-${platform}, so for a Debug build for simulator use:
$ autoninja -C out/Debug-iphonesimulator gn_all
(autoninja is a wrapper that automatically provides optimal values for the arguments passed to ninja.)
Note: The setup-gn.py script needs to run every time one of the BUILD.gn files is updated (either by you or after rebasing). If you forget to run it, the list of targets and files in the Xcode solution may be stale. You can run the script directly or use either gclient sync or gclient runhooks which will run setup-gn.py for you as part of the update hooks.
You can add a custom hook to .gclient file to configure setup-gn.py to be run as part of gclient runhooks. In that case, your .gclient file would look like this:
solutions = [
{
"name" : "src",
"url" : "https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git",
"deps_file" : "DEPS",
"managed" : False,
"custom_deps" : {},
"custom_vars" : {},
"custom_hooks": [{
"name": "setup_gn",
"pattern": ".",
"action": [
"python",
"src/ios/build/tools/setup-gn.py",
]
}],
"safesync_url": "",
},
]
target_os = ["ios"]
target_os_only = True
You can also follow the manual instructions on the Mac page, but make sure you set the GN arg target_os="ios".
To be able to build and run Chromium and the tests for devices, you need to have an Apple developer account (a free one will work) and the appropriate provisioning profiles, then configure the build to use them.
Please refer to the Apple documentation on how to get a code signing identity and certificates. You can check that you have a code signing identity correctly installed by running the following command.
$ xcrun security find-identity -v -p codesigning 1) 0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF01234567 "iPhone Developer: someone@example.com (XXXXXXXXXX)" 1 valid identities found
If the command output says you have zero valid identities, then you do not have a code signing identity installed and need to get one from Apple. If you have more than one identity, the build system may select the wrong one automatically, and you can use the ios_code_signing_identity gn variable to control which one to use by setting it to the identity hash, e.g. to "0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF01234567".
Once you have the code signing identity, you need to decide on a prefix for the application bundle identifier. This is controlled by the gn variable ios_app_bundle_id_prefix and usually corresponds to a reversed domain name (the default value is "org.chromium").
You then need to request provisioning profiles from Apple for your devices for the following bundle identifiers to build and run Chromium with these application extensions:
${prefix}.chrome.ios.herebedragons${prefix}.chrome.ios.herebedragons.ShareExtension${prefix}.chrome.ios.herebedragons.TodayExtension${prefix}.chrome.ios.herebedragons.SearchTodayExtensionAll these certificates need to have the “App Groups” (com.apple.security.application-groups) capability enabled for the following groups:
group.${prefix}.chromegroup.${prefix}.commonThe group.${prefix}.chrome is only shared by Chromium and its extensions to share files and configurations while the group.${prefix}.common is shared with Chromium and other applications from the same organisation and can be used to send commands to Chromium.
In addition to that, you need a different provisioning profile for each test application. Those provisioning profile will have a bundle identifier matching the following pattern ${prefix}.gtest.${test-suite-name} where ${test-suite-name} is the name of the test suite with underscores changed to dashes (e.g. base_unittests app will use ${prefix}.gest.base-unittests as bundle identifier).
To be able to run the EarlGrey tests on a device, you'll need two provisioning profiles for EarlGrey and OCHamcrest frameworks:
${prefix}.test.OCHamcrest${prefix}.test.EarlGreyIn addition to that, then you'll need one additional provisioning profile for the XCTest module too. It must match the pattern: ${prefix}.gtest.${test-suite-name}-module.
Other applications like ios_web_shell usually will require mobile provisioning profiles with bundle identifiers that may usually match the following pattern ${prefix}.${application-name} and may require specific capabilities.
Generally, if the mobile provisioning profile is missing then the code signing step will fail and will print the bundle identifier of the bundle that could not be signed on the command line, e.g.:
$ autoninja -C out/Debug-iphoneos ios_web_shell ninja: Entering directory `out/Debug-iphoneos' FAILED: ios_web_shell.app/ios_web_shell ios_web_shell.app/_CodeSignature/CodeResources ios_web_shell.app/embedded.mobileprovision python ../../build/config/ios/codesign.py code-sign-bundle -t=iphoneos -i=0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF01234567 -e=../../build/config/ios/entitlements.plist -b=obj/ios/web/shell/ios_web_shell ios_web_shell.app Error: no mobile provisioning profile found for "org.chromium.ios-web-shell". ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
Here, the build is failing because there are no mobile provisioning profiles installed that could sign the ios_web_shell.app bundle with the identity 0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF01234567. To fix the build, you'll need to request such a mobile provisioning profile from Apple.
You can inspect the file passed via the -e flag to the codesign.py script to check which capabilites are required for the mobile provisioning profile (e.g. src/build/config/ios/entitlements.plist for the above build error, remember that the paths are relative to the build directory, not to the source directory).
If the required capabilities are not enabled on the mobile provisioning profile, then it will be impossible to install the application on a device (Xcode will display an error stating that “The application was signed with invalid entitlements”).
Any target that is built and runs on the bots (see below) should run successfully in a local build. To run in the simulator from the command line, you can use iossim. For example, to run a debug build of Chromium:
$ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/iossim out/Debug-iphonesimulator/Chromium.app
With Xcode 9, iossim no longer automatically launches the Simulator. This must now be done manually from within Xcode (Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Simulator), and also must be done after running iossim.
Arguments needed to be passed to the test application through iossim, such as --gtest_filter=SomeTest.FooBar should be passed through the -c flag:
$ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/iossim \ -c "--gtest_filter=SomeTest.FooBar --gtest_repeat=3" \ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/base_unittests.app
EarlGrey tests are run differently than other test targets, as there is an XCTest bundle that is injected into the target application. Therefore you must also pass in the test bundle:
$ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/iossim \ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/ios_chrome_ui_egtests.app \ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/ios_chrome_ui_egtests.app/PlugIns/ios_chrome_ui_egtests_module.xctest
By default, iossim will pick an arbitrary simulator to run the tests. If you want to run them on a specific simulator, you can use -d to pick the simulated device and -s to select the iOS version.
For example, to run the tests on a simulated iPhone 6s running iOS 10.0, you would invoke iossim like this.
$ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/iossim -d 'iPhone 6s' -s '10.0' \ out/Debug-iphonesimulator/base_unittests.app
Please note that by default only a subset of simulator devices are installed with Xcode. You may have to install additional simulators in Xcode (or even an older version of Xcode) to be able to run on a specific configuration.
Go to “Preferences > Components” tab in Xcode to install other simulator images (this is the location the setting is in Xcode 9.2; it may be different in other version of the tool).
To update an existing checkout, you can run
$ git rebase-update $ gclient sync
The first command updates the primary Chromium source repository and rebases any of your local branches on top of tip-of-tree (aka the Git branch origin/master). If you don't want to use this script, you can also just use git pull or other common Git commands to update the repo.
The second command syncs dependencies to the appropriate versions and re-runs hooks as needed.
Remember that the XCode project you interact with while working on Chromium is a build artifact, generated from the BUILD.gn files. Do not use it to add new files; instead see the procedures for working with files.
If you have problems building, join us in #chromium on irc.freenode.net and ask there. As mentioned above, be sure that the waterfall is green and the tree is open before checking out. This will increase your chances of success.
git statusgit status is used frequently to determine the status of your checkout. Due to the large number of files in Chromium‘s checkout, git status performance can be quite variable. Increasing the system’s vnode cache appears to help. By default, this command:
$ sysctl -a | egrep kern\..*vnodes
Outputs kern.maxvnodes: 263168 (263168 is 257 * 1024). To increase this setting:
$ sudo sysctl kern.maxvnodes=$((512*1024))
Higher values may be appropriate if you routinely move between different Chromium checkouts. This setting will reset on reboot, the startup setting can be set in /etc/sysctl.conf:
$ echo kern.maxvnodes=$((512*1024)) | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
Or edit the file directly.
If git --version reports 2.8 or higher, try running
$ git update-index --test-untracked-cache
If the output ends with OK, then the following may also improve performance of git status:
$ git config core.untrackedCache true
If git --version reports 2.6 or higher, but below 2.8, you can instead run
$ git update-index --untracked-cache
If you're getting the error
Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo.
the Xcode license hasn't been accepted yet which (contrary to the message) any user can do by running:
$ xcodebuild -license
Only accepting for all users of the machine requires root:
$ sudo xcodebuild -license