There are instructions for other platforms linked from the get the code page.
Are you a Google employee? See go/building-chrome instead.
[TOC]
- A 64-bit Mac capable of running the required version of Xcode.
- Xcode 15.0 or higher.
Note: after installing Xcode, you need to launch it and to let it install the iOS simulator. This is required as part of the build, see this discussion on chromium-dev.
Clone 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": [
"python3",
"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"
.
This section contains some things you can change to speed up your builds, sorted so that the things that make the biggest difference are first.
Google employees should use Reclient, a distributed compilation system. Detailed information is available internally but the relevant gn arg is:
use_remoteexec = true
Google employees can visit go/building-chrome-mac#using-remote-execution for more information. For external contributors, Reclient does not support iOS builds.
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.dev
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.ContentTodayExtension
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.CredentialProviderExtension
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.IntentsExtension
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.OpenExtension
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.ShareExtension
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.TodayExtension
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.WidgetKitExtension
All these certificates need to have the "App Groups"
(com.apple.security.application-groups
) capability enabled for
the following groups:
group.${prefix}.chrome
group.${prefix}.common
The group.${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.
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev
and
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev.CredentialProviderExtension
need the AutoFill
Credential Provider Entitlement, which corresponds to the key
com.apple.developer.authentication-services.autofill-credential-provider
.
${prefix}.chrome.ios.dev
additionally needs the
com.apple.developer.kernel.extended-virtual-addressing
entitlement when
running on a real device.
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}.gtest.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.EarlGrey
In 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 capabilities 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").
The iOS build supports compiling the blink web platform. To compile blink
set a gn arg in your .setup-gn
file. Note the blink web platform is
experimental code and should only be used for analysis.
[gn_args]
use_blink = true
Note that only certain targets support blink. content_shell
being the
most useful.
$ autoninja -C out/Debug-iphonesimulator content_shell
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 -i out/Debug-iphonesimulator/Chromium.app
From Xcode 9 on, 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 -i \
-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 -i \
out/Debug-iphonesimulator/ios_chrome_ui_egtests.app \
out/Debug-iphonesimulator/ios_chrome_ui_egtests.app/PlugIns/ios_chrome_ui_egtests_module.xctest
The current Blink for iOS only supports running Web Tests on the simulator environment now. Before you run the web tests, you need to build the blink_tests target to get content_shell and all of the other needed binaries for the simulator test environment.
$ autoninja -C out/Debug-iphonesimulator blink_tests
When the blink_tests target is complete you can then run the test runner script (third_party/blink/tools/run_web_tests.py) as below. See Web Tests document for more information.
$ third_party/blink/tools/run_web_tests.py -t Debug-iphonesimulator \
--platform ios
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 -i -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).
Developers are able to remotely use DevTools in a host machine (e.g. Mac) and
inspect content_shell
for development.
On the simulator, one just needs to pass the --remote-debugging-port=9222
argument for content_shell
and in the host machine access it via
chrome://inspect
. It is possible to change the default port listening (9222)
and configure another one via the "Configure…" button and then "Target
discovery settings" dialog.
To use DevTools in the remote device it is necessary to also pass the remote
debugging address argument to content-shell
so any address could bind for
debugging: --remote-debugging-address=0.0.0.0 --remote-debugging-port=9222
.
Then in the host machine one needs to configure the IP address of the device in
the "Target discovery settings" dialog e.g. 192.168.0.102:9222
.
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/main
). 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.
To help with deterministic builds, and to work with reclient, the path to source
files in debugging symbols are relative to source directory. To allow Xcode
to find the source files, you need to ensure to have an ~/.lldbinit-Xcode
file with the following lines into it (substitute {SRC} for your actual path
to the root of Chromium's sources):
script sys.path[:0] = ['{SRC}/tools/lldb']
script import lldbinit
This will also allow you to see the content of some of Chromium types in the
debugger like std::u16string
, ... If you want to use lldb
directly, name
the file ~/.lldbinit
instead of ~/.lldbinit-Xcode
.
Note: if you are using ios/build/tools/setup-gn.py
to generate the Xcode
project, the script also generate an .lldbinit
file next to the project and
configure Xcode to use that file instead of the global one.
To change the version of Xcode used to build Chromium on iOS, please follow the steps below:
-
Launch the new version of Xcode.app.
This is required as Xcode may need to install some components into the system before the new version can be used from the command-line.
-
Reboot your computer.
This is required as some of Xcode components are daemons that are not automatically stopped when updating Xcode, and command-line tools will fail if the daemon version is incompatible (usually
actool
fails). -
Run
gn gen
.This is required as the
ninja
files generated bygn
encodes some information about Xcode (notably the path to the SDK, ...) that will change with each version. It is not possible to haveninja
re-rungn gen
automatically when those changes unfortunately.If you have a downstream chekout, run
gclient runhooks
instead ofgn gen
as it will ensure thatgn gen
will be run automatically for all possible combination of target and configuration from within Xcode.
If you skip some of those steps, the build may occasionally succeed, but it has been observed in the past that those steps are required in the vast majority of the situation. Please save yourself some painful build debugging and follow them.
If you use xcode-select
to switch between multiple version of Xcode,
you will have to follow the same steps.
git 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.
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
You can significantly speed up git by using fsmonitor. You should enable fsmonitor in large repos, such as Chromium and v8. Enabling it globally will launch many processes and probably isn't worthwhile. Be sure you have at least version 2.43 (fsmonitor on the Mac is broken before then). The command to enable fsmonitor in the current repo is:
$ git config core.fsmonitor true
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