Muon-based Brave Browser Integrations

[olizilla]

• Brave switched to Chromium in 2018 so I collapsed outdated notes that were related to Muon-based Brave build.
• IPFS Companion works perfectly with Chromium-based Brave, and this PR updates our docs to reflect that (Add Official Support for Chromium-based Brave #609)
• We now work toward bundling go-ipfs with Brave, with the goal of having something similar to how Tor Tabs work.
• Follow → IPFS Integration - Roadmap and discussion brave/brave-browser#819

– @lidel, Q4 2018

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historical notes about Muon-based Brave (early 2018)

ipfs-companion runs in brave!

The following ipfs address styles resolve, either to a local gateway, or the public one.

• ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZyRCtk8MGpuWXn2d1QyTfLWKMTHrT2aHs2vDkfry5zKT
• ipfs://QmZyRCtk8MGpuWXn2d1QyTfLWKMTHrT2aHs2vDkfry5zKT
• dweb:/ipfs/QmZyRCtk8MGpuWXn2d1QyTfLWKMTHrT2aHs2vDkfry5zKT

In the case of ipfs:// style, brave prompts the user if it's ok to "open in an external application. The url shown is the gateway url rather than what's been entered in the url bar, which could cause confusion.

A nice feature of using the ipfs:// form is that it is preserved in the url bar. The other forms are translated to a gateway url.

NURI style isn't supported (just for completeness)
/ipfs/QmZyRCtk8MGpuWXn2d1QyTfLWKMTHrT2aHs2vDkfry5zKT is redirected to
file:///ipfs/QmZyRCtk8MGpuWXn2d1QyTfLWKMTHrT2aHs2vDkfry5zKT

Brave supports a subset of the the chrome-extensions api, so there are few issues to figure out.

Things to get working

• ☑️ Open Preferences menu item fails silently. Nothing happens on click.
• ☑️ Browser action icon. Silently fails to render... I've tried both the svg and explicitly overriding it to the png (possibly caused by Extension icons are not displayed due to "Not allowed load local resource" brave/browser-laptop#11797 , extension icons should appear brave/browser-laptop#11143)

Missing apis

We can talk to brave about getting this enabled in muon.

• ☐ contextMenus.create (means no ipfs option appears when right clicking on a page)
• ☐ contextMenus.update
• ☐ idle.queryState
• ☐ runtime.openOptionsPage (this causes the Open Preferences fail)

Requested, brave/browser-laptop#9556 (comment)

Minor

• ☐ Copy canonical address and Copy public gateway url works, but there is a console error afterwards

Uncaught (in promise) {message: "Access to extension API denied."}

• ☐ Same issue with pin and unpin
• ☐ open webui works, but brave blocks a resource used by the webgl connections globe. (help requested: IPFS Integration - Roadmap and discussion brave/browser-laptop#9556 (comment) ) Proposed solution: IPFS Integration - Roadmap and discussion brave/browser-laptop#9556 (comment)

WebGL: http://127.0.0.1:5001/ipfs/QmPhnvn747LqwPYMJmQVorMaGbMSgA7mRRoyyZYz3DoZRQ/#/connections

• ☑️ The action menu drop down resizes several times during rendering, which is quite slow in brave and looks awkward. Related to Popup render issue in Chrome #318

[olizilla]

Great news, we're working with the Brave team directly, and our goal is to get go-ipfs bundled with the browser, and exposed to the WebExtension.

@whyrusleeping what would be a sensible default config and args for running a go-ipfs daemon as a utility process in a browser; the end user will only use it via ipfs-companion.

Something like

ipfs daemon --init  --migrate=true  --enable-gc --routing=dhtclient

[mojoaxel]

our goal is to get go-ifps bundled with the browser

Why go-ipfs and not js-ipfs?

[lidel]

Why go-ipfs and not js-ipfs?

@mojoaxel maturity, feature set and general performance when run as a background service. At this time go-ipfs is easier on CPU and provides dhtclient mode which decreases ambient bandwidth use and smaller battery drain (key characteristics of something that is expected to run in background all the time). Key selling point for js-ipfs is that it works in browser environments, but if we can bundle go-ipfs, it is a better experience for now (js-ipfs will improve eventually, with things like WASM etc).

[whyrusleeping]

@olizilla Yeah, thats a good start. We also might want to run it with a lowered connection count.

@magik6k do we have an init profile that would work well for this?

[magik6k]

There is the lowpower profile, but it might be a bit too aggressive - https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/blob/master/repo/config/profile.go#L153-L158

[olizilla]

@magik6j @whyrusleeping something like a --profile=desktop that we could recommend for ipfs companion users would be rad. We've been suggestion people add --routing=dhtclient but a profile seems like a better fit. Should I open an issue for it on go-ipfs?

[whyrusleeping]

@olizilla yes, please do. We'll try and get that added before the next release.

[lidel]

cc brave/brave-browser#819

[lidel]

Brave announced first release of Chromium-based version. IPFS Companion works perfectly with Chromium-based Brave, and this PR updates our docs to reflect that. I also updated #312 (comment) to provide better intro to currently ongoing work.

[lidel]

Work related to Chromium-based Brave continues in #716