Build broken

Help! Chrome no longer builds or works!?

Chrome no longer builds?

There are many reasons why Chrome may no longer build, some more concrete than others, and deciding which approach to take towards finding the root cause is at the developer's discretion.

Broken ToT?

One potential issue is that tip-of-trunk could be broken. Failures can be broad, but they can also only affect a subset of builds. A reasonable approach for debugging an issue is as follows:

• Check the tree status.
  • This is a great sanity check of the current tip-of-trunk status. However, just because the tree status is okay does not mean there are not tip-of-trunk issues.
• Rule out local changes by syncing and building on a fresh branch.
• Rule out external changes by checking if any related files were modified in a recent change.
  • This step can be difficult since it might not always be clear what files are related.
• Check if the issue can be reproduced by another person.
  • If a colleague can reproduce the same issue it is very unlikely to be a local problem.

After working through the steps above, if you still believe that tip-of-trunk is broken, you should start by opening a ticket on crbug/ that describes the issue and known affected builds. Be sure to include the culprit change in the ticket description if applicable and CC the current ChromeOS sheriffs. For example, see this ticket.

If the culprit change is known

The culprit change should be reverted. This can be done by the submitter of the change, by the sheriff, or by yourself. Depending on the availability of the submitter it may make sense for you to revert the change yourself; take a look at the existing documentation on this, and feel free to reach out to the sheriff for help or guidance.

Finally, once the culprit change is reverted the failures should be verified as fixed, and the ticket you opened should be marked as verified.

If the culprit change is not known

Try to identify an owner of the affected code and see if they can take the ticket or point you in the right direction. If it is not clear who the owner would be, work with the sheriff to figure out the next steps.

Broken build configuration?

It is unlikely but possible that the build configuration has become broken for an unclear reason, most likely after pulling from origin/main. This can result in failures to build Chrome, and can be difficult to debug. The easiest solution will be to nuke your configuration and regenerate it.

You can do this by simply deleting your build directory, regenerating your build configuration, and re-running (auto)ninja. Finally, you will likely need to gclient sync once more. Reference the Building Chrome section for more details around these steps.

Chrome builds and deploys, but I see a black screen or frozen “G” logo on the Chromebook?

There are a few debugging steps you can take:

1. Check if you’ve deployed a build with DCHECKs on. It may be fatally quitting on failed DCHECKs.
2. You should still be able to SSH into the machine when in this state. Consult Viewing logs -- investigate logs and error messages to determine root cause.
   1. If you can't still SSH into the machine, it may be because its IP address has changed. In this case, you can check the DUT's IP address using the command $ ifconfig in the VT2 terminal.
   2. If you are still unable to SSH into the machine, flash a new image from go/goldeneye and a flashdrive. See Setting up your Chromebook for details.
3. Make sure your platform version isn't too old. Sometimes updating your platform version to latest-dev can pull in fixes and keep things inline with your Chrome build. See Flashing ChromiumOS for details.
4. This may happen if the args.gn file has incorrect arguments; it may have manually edited or created. Cleaning your out* folder is good way to fix this: use the command $ gn clean out/Default (or specify a different out* folder).
5. If all else fails, read through or write to chat groups or email groups (e.g., g/chromeos-chatty-eng).

deploy-chrome error: "cannot remount"

If you encounter an error like

mount: /: cannot remount /dev/mmcblk0p3 read-write, is write-protected.

when running deploy-chrome, your Chromebook screen is likely black, but you should still be able to get into its terminal. Try the following:

1. SSH into the Chromebook.

2. Run e2fsck using the path provided in the error message. For example,

   e2fsck /dev/mmcblk0p3
   

3. Answer "y" to the prompts.

4. Reboot the Chromebook with reboot.

5. Attempt to deploy again.