DEPRECATED: Building Chromium for Chromium OS (simple chrome)

Contents

  1. 1 Typography conventions
  2. 2 Checkout Chromium
    1. 2.1 Get Google API keys
  3. 3 Run `cros chrome-sdk`
    1. 3.1 Using a custom Chromium OS build from your Chromium OS chroot (optional)
    2. 3.2 Build Chromium
    3. 3.3 Configure a build directory
  4. 4 Set up the Chromium OS device
    1. 4.1 Create a bootable USB stick
    2. 4.2 Put your Chrome OS device in dev mode
    3. 4.3 Install the test image onto your device
    4. 4.4 Connect device to corp network
  5. 5 Deploying Chrome to the device
    1. 5.1 Checking the IP address
    2. 5.2 Using deploy_chrome
  6. 6 Debugging
    1. 6.1 Logfiles
    2. 6.2 Commandline Flags and Envvars
      1. 6.2.1 R37 (and newer)
      2. 6.2.2 R36 (and older)
    3. 6.3 Debug build
    4. 6.4 Deploying debug build without stripping symbols
    5. 6.5 Remote GDB
  7. 7 Additional instructions
    1. 7.1 Updating the version of the Chrome OS SDK
    2. 7.2 Specifying the version of the Chrome OS SDK to use
    3. 7.3 Updating Chrome
    4. 7.4 Updating Deployed Files
    5. 7.5 Using cros flash with xbuddy to download images
    6. 7.6 Setting a custom prompt (optional)
This page is deprecated. The up-to-date version can be found at  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/simple_chrome_workflow.md

























This workflow allows you to quickly build/deploy Chromium to any Chromium OS device without needing a Chromium OS checkout or chroot. It's useful for trying out your changes on a real device while you're doing Chromium development. If you want your Chromium changes to be included when building a full Chromium OS image, see the instructions in the development guide.

At its core is the chrome-sdk shell which sets up the shell environment, and fetches the necessary SDK components (CrOS toolchain, sysroot, etc.).

Typography conventions

Color Paths, files, and commands:
green text on your build machine, outside the chroot
purple text inside the chrome-sdk shell on your build machine
Note: This is not the same thing as the cros-sdk chroot.
crimson text on your Chromium OS device

Checkout Chromium

First off make sure all preconditions are met:

  1. You have a local copy of the Chromium source code.
  2. You have a local copy of depot_tools.

Get Google API keys

In order to sign in to your Chromebook you must have Google API keys:

  • External contributors, see http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys. You'll need to put them in your out_board/Release/args.gn file, see below.
  • Googlers, see go/building-chrome to get internal source. If you have src-internal in your .gclient file the official API keys will be set up automatically.

Run `cros chrome-sdk`

Run this from within your Chromium checkout (not the Chromium OS chroot):

Have you setup gsutil yet?

Steps below may run slow and fail with "Login Required" from gsutil. Use depot_tools/gsutil.py and run gsutil config to set the authentication token. (If you are a Googler, use your @google.com account)

NOTE: When prompted for a project ID, enter 134157665460 as your project ID (this is the Chrome OS project ID).

# Note: Replace $BOARD with a Chromium OS board name

cros chrome-sdk --board=$BOARD

cros chrome-sdk will fetch the latest Chrome OS SDK for building Chrome, and put you in a shell (with a command prompt starting with (sdk BOARD VERSION). 

cros chrome-sdk will also automatically install and start the Goma server, with the active server port stored in the $SDK_GOMA_PORT environment variable.

Tip: cros chrome-sdk will set up the environment to build external Chromium by default. To build the official Chrome, run with the --internal flag.

Note: There are no public builders yet for non-generic boards, so you'll have to use the generic or create your own local build. Star http://crbug.com/360342 for updates.

Using a custom Chromium OS build from your Chromium OS chroot (optional)

If you are making changes to Chromium OS and have a Chromium OS build inside a chroot that you want to build against, run cros chrome-sdk with the --chroot option.

cros chrome-sdk --board=$BOARD --chroot=/path/to/chromiumos/chroot

Build Chromium

Configure a build directory

Create a GN build directory. Run the following inside the chrome-sdk shell:
$ gn gen out_$SDK_BOARD/Release --args="$GN_ARGS"
This will generate out_$SDK_BOARD/Release/args.gn.
  • You must specify --args, otherwise your build will not work on the device.
  • You only need to run 'gn gen' once within the same 'cros chrome-sdk' session.
  • However, if you exit the session or sync/update chrome the $GN_ARGS might change and you need to 'gn gen' again.
  • GYP is no longer supported. You don't need 'gclient runhooks' any more.
You can edit the args with:
$ gn args out_$SDK_BOARD/Release
You can replace Release with Debug (or something else) for different configurations. See "Debug build" below.

GN build configuration discusses various GN build configurations. For more info on GN, run gn help on the command line or read the quick start guide.

To build Chrome, run:
ninja -C out_${SDK_BOARD}/Release -j500 -l 10 chrome chrome_sandbox nacl_helper
This runs Goma with 500 concurrent jobs and a maximum load of 10. You can tweak this number to achieve optimal build performance. To watch the build progress, find out the Goma port (echo $SDK_GOMA_PORT) and open http://localhost:<port_number> in a browser.

IMPORTANT: Do not attempt to build targets other than chrome, chrome_sandbox, nacl_helper, or (optionally) chromiumos_preflight in Simple Chrome, they will likely fail.

Congratulations, you've now built Chromium for Chromium OS!

Once you've built Chromium the first time, you can build incrementally just using ninja, e.g.:

ninja -C out_${SDK_BOARD}/Release -j500 -l 10 chrome

Tip: The default extensions will be installed by the test image you use below.

Set up the Chromium OS device

Before you can deploy your build of Chromium to the device, it needs to have a test image loaded on it.

Create a bootable USB stick

You will need a 4GiB USB stick (you can get one at the ChromeStop where you picked up your Chromebook).

Non-Googlers: Download a test image from the URL https://storage.cloud.google.com/chromeos-image-archive/$BOARD-release/<version>/chromiumos_test_image.tar.xz where $BOARD and version come from your SDK prompt. For example (sdk lumpy R27-3789.0.0) is the lumpy board using version R27-3789.0.0)

Googlers: Download an unsigned test image from https://cros-goldeneye.corp.google.com/console/listRelease. The latest dev channel is a good choice.

After you download the compressed tarball containing the test image (it should have "test" somewhere in the file name), extract the image by running:

tar xf chromiumos_test_image.tar.xz

Copy the image to your drive using cros flash

cros flash usb:// chromiumos_test_image.bin

If cros flash does not work you can do it the old fashioned way using dd. Where the X in sdX is the path to your usb key, and you can use dmesg to figure out the right path (it'll show when you plug it in). bs stands for block size, and was set to one gigabyte here. With the default value, the operation can be very slow. Make sure that the USB stick is not mounted before running this. You might have to turn of automounting in your operating system.

sudo dd if=chromiumos_test_image.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1G

Put your Chrome OS device in dev mode

Follow the device-specific instructions to 

  1. Put your device into dev mode.
  2. Enable booting from USB.

Install the test image onto your device

  1. Plug the USB stick into the machine and reboot.
  2. At the dev-mode warning screen, press Ctrl-U to boot from the USB.
  3. Switch to terminal, Ctrl-Alt-F2 (Ctrl-Alt-NavigateForward)
  4. Login as chronos, password test0000.
  5. sudo /usr/sbin/chromeos-install

IMPORTANT NOTES:

  • Installing Chromium OS onto your hard disk will WIPE YOUR HARD DISK CLEAN.
  • DO NOT log into this test image with a username and password you care about. The root password is PUBLIC ("test0000"), so anyone with ssh access could compromise the device.

Connect device to corp network

To do this you will need a USB-to-ethernet dongle (you can find these at the techstop).

Deploying Chrome to the device

To deploy the build to a device, you will need direct ssh access to it from your computer. The scripts below handle everything else.

Checking the IP address

  1. Click the status area in the lower-right corner
  2. Click the network icon
  3. Click the circled i symbol in the lower-right corner
  4. A small window pops up that shows the IP address
This also works both before and after login. Another option is to run 'ifconfig' from the shell (Ctrl-Alt-t -> shell) after guest login.

Using deploy_chrome

Just type deploy_chrome from with your chrome-sdk shell. It will use rsync to incrementally deploy to the device.

Specify the build output directory to deploy from using --build-dir, and the IP address of the target device (which must be ssh-able as user 'root') using --to, where %CHROME_DIR% is the path to your Chrome checkout:

cd %CHROME_DIR%/src
deploy_chrome --build-dir=out_${SDK_BOARD}/Release --to=172.11.11.11

Tip: deploy_chrome lives under $CHROME_DIR/src/third_party/chromite/bin. You can run deploy_chrome outside of a chrome-sdk shell as well.

Tip: Specify the --target-dir flag to deploy to a custom location on the target device.

NOTE for GN: The gn build outputs .so files (for component builds) and some test files in a different location than the gyp build. In order for deploy_chrome to successfully locate these files, it needs to know that chrome was built using gn. Currently cros chrome-sdk looks for GYP_CHROMIUM_NO_ACTION=1 as a hint to set  USE="gn" which will cause deploy_chrome to look for files in the correct place.
If you do not have GYP_CHROMIUM_NO_ACTION=1 set or if you do but have build chrome with gyp, you can set USE="gn" or USE="" to indicate where deploy_chrome should look for output files.

Debugging

Logfiles

Other than the normal system output in /var/log/messages, you can find the output of Chrome itself in /var/log/ui/ui.LATEST. This is where vmodule output and such ends up.

Commandline Flags and Envvars

If you want to tweak the command line of Chrome or its environment, you have to do this on the device itself.

R37 (and newer)

Edit the /etc/chrome_dev.conf file. Instructions on using it are in the file itself.

R36 (and older)

Edit the /sbin/session_manager_setup.sh script. If you go to the end, you'll see where Chrome is invoked and where you can tweak the flags/env.

Debug build

For cros chrome-sdk GN configurations, Release is the default. A debug build of Chrome will include useful tools like DCHECK and debug logs like DVLOG. For a Debug configuration, specify  --args="$GN_ARGS is_debug=true is_component_build = false".

Alternately, you can just turn on DCHECKs for a release build. You can do this with --args="$GN_ARGS dcheck_always_on=true".

Deploying debug build without stripping symbols

You need to add --nostrip to deploy_chrome because otherwise it will strip symbols even from a debug build.  The rootfs will probably not be big enough to hold all the binaries so you need to put it on the stateful partition and bind mount over the real directory. Create the directory /usr/local/chrome on your device and run:

deploy_chrome --build-dir=out_$BOARD/Debug \
              --to=<ip-address> \
              --target-dir=/usr/local/chrome \
              --mount-dir=/opt/google/chrome \
              --nostrip

Notes:
  • If you just want crash backtraces in the logs you can deploy a release build with --nostrip. You don't need a debug build.
  • The remount from /usr/local/chrome to /opt/google/chrome is transient, so you need to remount after reboot. Simplest way is to run the same command after reboot (It will not redeploy binaries less there is a change)
  • You may hit DCHECKs during startup time, or when you login, which eventually may reboot the device. Please check log files in /var/log/chrome or /home/chronos/user/log.
    • You may create /var/run/disable_chrome_restart to prevent restart loop and investigate.
    • You can temporarily disable these DCHECKs to proceed, but please file a bug for such DCHECK because it's most likely a bug.
  • You may not be able to create /usr/local/chrome until rootfs has been removed on the device, and the device has been remounted as read-write.
  • The mounting will need to be applied on each boot. If the startup needs to be tested a symbolic link will be needed instead
    • ssh to device
      • mkdir /home/chrome
      • rm -R /opt/google/chrome
      • ln -s /home/chrome /opt/google/chrome
    • deploy_chrome --build-dir=out_${SDK_BOARD}/Release --to=172.11.11.11

Remote GDB

Core dumps are disabled by defaul.t See additional debugging tips for how to enable core files.

On the target machine, open up a port for the gdb server to listen on, and attach the gdb server to the running chrome process.

sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 1234 -j ACCEPT
sudo gdbserver --attach :1234 $(pgrep chrome -P $(pgrep session_manager))

On your host machine (inside the chrome-sdk shell), run gdb and start the Python interpreter:

cd %CHROME_DIR%/src
gdb out_${SDK_BOARD}/Release/chrome
Reading symbols from /usr/local/google2/chromium2/src/out_link/Release/chrome...
(gdb) pi 
>>>

Note: These instructions are for targeting an x86_64 device.  For now, to target an ARM device, you need to run the cross-compiled gdb from within a chroot.

Then from within the Python interpreter, run these commands:

import os
sysroot = os.environ['SYSROOT']
gdb.execute('set sysroot %s' % sysroot)
gdb.execute('set solib-absolute-prefix %s' % sysroot)
gdb.execute('set debug-file-directory %s/usr/lib/debug' % sysroot)
gdb.execute('set solib-search-path out_%s/Release/lib' % os.environ['SDK_BOARD'])  # Or "Debug" for a debug build
gdb.execute('target remote 12.34.56.78:1234')

If you wish, after you connect, you can Ctrl-D out of the Python shell.

Extra debugging instructions are located at http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/debugging-tips.

Additional instructions

Updating the version of the Chrome OS SDK

When you invoke cros chrome-sdk, the script fetches the version of the SDK that corresponds to your Chrome checkout.  To update the SDK, sync your Chrome checkout and re-run cros chrome-sdk.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

  • Every time that you update Chrome or the Chrome OS SDK, it is possible that Chrome may start depending on new features from a new Chrome OS image. This can cause unexpected problems, so it is important to update your image regularly. Instructions for updating your Chrome OS image are above in Set Up the Chromium OS device.
  • Don't forget to re-configure your build directories (See Configure a build directory)

Specifying the version of the Chrome OS SDK to use

You can specify a version of Chrome OS to build against. This is handy for tracking down when a particular bug was introduced.

cros chrome-sdk --board=$BOARD --version=3680.0.0

Once you are finished testing the old version of the chrome-sdk, you can always start a new shell with the latest version again. Here's an example:

cros chrome-sdk --board=$BOARD

Updating Chrome

Tip: If you update Chrome inside the chrome-sdk, you may then be using an SDK that is out of date with the current Chrome.  See Updating the version of the Chrome OS SDK above.

git rebase-update
gclient sync

Updating Deployed Files

Since the gyp files don't define which targets get installed, that information is maintained in the chromite repo as part of Chromium OS. That repo is also integrated into the Chromium source tree via the DEPS file.

In order to add/remove a file from the installed list:

  1. Go into the chromite directory and modify lib/chrome_util.py
    1. Look for the _COPY_PATHS list
    2. Add your new file with optional=True
  2. Commit your change locally using git
  3. Upload your change to gerrit
    1. git push origin master:refs/for/master
  4. Get it reviewed by someone on the Chromium OS build team (e-mail chromium-os-dev@ if you can't find anyone)
  5. Merge the change into Chromium OS via gerrit
  6. Update the DEPS file in Chromium to use the new chromite sha1
  7. Check in the Chromium change like normal
  8. Once everything has settled, then go back and remove the optional=True from the file list
    1. Unless the file is actually optional, then keep it

Using cros flash with xbuddy to download images

cros flash with xbuddy will automatically download an image and write it to USB for you. It's very convenient, but for now it requires a full Chrome OS checkout and must be run inside the Chrome OS chroot. (issue 437877)

cros flash usb:// xbuddy://remote/$BOARD/<version>/test

Replace $BOARD with and <version> with the right values. Both can be seen in your SDK prompt (e.g. (sdk lumpy R27-3789.0.0) is the lumpy board using version R27-3789.0.0).

See the Cros Flash page for more details.

Setting a custom prompt (optional)

By default, cros chrome-sdk prepends something like '(sdk link R52-8315.0.0)' to the prompt (with the version of the chromeos prebuilt being used).

If you prefer to colorize the prompt, you can set PS1 in ~/.chromite/chrome_sdk.bashrc, e.g. to prepend a yellow '(sdk link 8315.0.0)' to the prompt:

PS1='\[\033[01;33m\](sdk ${SDK_BOARD} ${SDK_VERSION})\[\033[00m\] \w \[\033[01;36m\]$(__git_ps1 "(%s)")\[\033[00m\] \$ '

NOTE: Currently the release version (e.g. 52) is not available as an environment variable.