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Checking out and building Thorium on Linux  

There are instructions for other platforms here in the Thorium Docs directory. You can also read the old building instructions.

Windows

For Windows and Windows AVX2, I made new dedicated instructions. If you are building on Windows use BUILDING_WIN.md and if you are building for Windows on Linux, use WIN_CROSS_BUILD_INSTRUCTIONS

System Requirements

  • A x64 machine with at least 8GB of RAM. 16GB or more is highly recommended.
  • At least 75GB of free disk space.
  • You must have Git and Python v3.8+ installed already (and python3 must point to a Python v3.8+ binary, i.e. in your path or as default python install). Depot_tools bundles an appropriate version of Python in $depot_tools/python-bin, if you don't have an appropriate version already on your system.

Most development is done on Ubuntu 22.04, Jammy Jellyfish (This is what Chromium's build infrastructure currently runs). Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 no longer works. 20.04 and Debian 10/11/12 will work. There are some instructions for other distros below, but they are mostly unsupported.

The scripts to build Thorium assume that depot_tools, thorium and chromium are both in $HOME!

Install depot_tools

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). When setting the path after cloning depot_tools to your home directory do not use ~ in the PATH, otherwise gclient runhooks will fail to run. Rather, you should use either $HOME or the absolute path. So, assuming you cloned depot_tools to $HOME:

$ export PATH="${HOME}/depot_tools:$PATH" or $ export PATH="/home/alex/depot_tools:$PATH"

Get the code

Thorium Code

Clone the Thorium repo into $HOME

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium.git

Chromium Code

Create a chromium directory for the checkout and change to it.

$ mkdir ~/chromium && cd ~/chromium

Run the fetch tool from depot_tools to check out the code and its dependencies.

$ fetch --nohooks chromium

The --nohooks flag is ommitted on other platforms, we just use it on linux to explicitly run the hooks later, after installing the prerequisites. fetch and repo are used to download, rebase, and sync all Google repositories, including Chromium, ChromiumOS, Android, Fuchsia, Infra, Monorail, GN, etc.

If you don't want the full repo history, you can save a lot of time by adding the --no-history flag to fetch. This is equivalent to a shallow git clone with a depth of 1.

Expect the command to take 20 minutes on a fast (150mbps+) connection, and many hours on slower ones.

If you've already installed the build dependencies on the machine (from another checkout, for example), you can omit the --nohooks flag and fetch will automatically execute gclient runhooks at the end.

When fetch completes, it will have created a hidden .gclient file and a directory called src in the chromium directory. The remaining instructions assume you have switched to the src directory, so:

$ cd src

Install additional build dependencies

Once you have checked out the code, and assuming you're using Ubuntu, run the install-build-deps.sh script.

$ ./build/install-build-deps.sh --no-nacl

You can run it with the flag --help to see arguments. For example, you would want --lib32 if building for 32 bit Linux, --arm for building a Raspberry Pi release, --chromeos-fonts for building Thorium for ThoriumOS, and --quick-check just to verify needed libraries are installed.

You may need to adjust the build dependencies for other distros. There are some notes at the end of this document, but we make no guarantees for their accuracy, as distros get updated over time.

Run the hooks

Once you've run install-build-deps at least once, you can now run the Chromium-specific hooks, which will download additional binaries and other things like LLVM and a Debian Sysroot.:

$ gclient runhooks

Optional: You can also build with API keys if you want your build to talk to some Google services like Google Sync, Translate, and GeoLocation.   Thorium has its own keys in a private repository, if you are a builder or would like access to them, contact me. Otherwise, for personal or development builds, you can create your own keys and add yourself to google-browser-signin-testaccounts to enable Sync.

Setting up the build

First, we need to run ./trunk.sh (in the root of the Thorium repo.) This will Rebase/Sync the Chromium repo, and revert it to stock Chromium.
It will also fetch all the tags/branches, which is needed for the version.sh script. It should be used before every seperate build. See the Updating section.

IMPORTANT This will update and sync the sources to the latest revision (tip of tree) and ensure you have all the version tags.

  • Then, to check out the current Chromium revision that Thorium is using, run ./version.sh. At the end it will download the PGO profiles for Chromium for all platforms. The file will be downloaded to //chromium/src/chrome/build/pgo_profiles/*.profdata with the actual file name looking something like 'chrome-linux-6167-1706004111-41f78c57fb3a1fe49a5c549b16f0221465339af9.profdata', which should be added to the end of args.gn as per below. Take note of this, as we will be using it in the args.gn below.
  • Then, (from where you cloned this repo) run ./setup.sh. This will copy all the files and patches to the needed locations.
  • NOTE: To build for MacOS, use ./setup.sh --mac. To build for Raspberry Pi, use ./setup.sh --raspi. Use ./setup.sh --help to see all options/platforms.

Chromium and Thorium use Ninja as their main build tool, along with a tool called GN to generate .ninja files in the build output directory. You can create any number of build directories with different configurations. Create the build output directory by running:

  • Run gn args out/thorium and the contents of 'args.gn' in the root of this repo should be copy/pasted into the editor. Note that for Windows, Mac, ChromiumOS, or Android there are seperate *_args.gn files for those platforms. --Include your api keys here at the top or leave blank, and edit the last line to point to the actual path and file name of '*.profdata'
  • For more info about args.gn, read the ABOUT_GN_ARGS.md file.
  • 'infra/args.list' contains an alphabetical list with descriptions of all possible build arguments; gn_args.list gives a similar list but with the flags in args.gn added.

You can list all the possible build arguments and pipe it to a text file by running:

$ gn args out/thorium --list >> /path/to/ARGS.list
  • You only have to run this once for each new build directory, Ninja will update the build files as needed.
  • You can replace thorium with another name, but it should be a subdirectory of out. Note that if you choose another name, the trunk.sh and build.sh scripts will not work.
  • For information on the args.gn that Thorium uses, see ABOUT_GN_ARGS.md.
  • For other build arguments, including release settings, see GN build configuration. The default will be a vanilla Chromium debug component build matching the current host operating system and CPU.
  • For more info on GN, run gn help on the command line or read the quick start guide.

ccache

You can use ccache to speed up local builds.

Increase your ccache hit rate by setting CCACHE_BASEDIR to a parent directory that the working directories all have in common (e.g., /home/yourusername/development). Consider using CCACHE_SLOPPINESS=include_file_mtime (since if you are using multiple working directories, header times in svn sync'ed portions of your trees will be different - see the ccache troubleshooting section for additional information). If you use symbolic links from your home directory to get to the local physical disk directory where you keep those working development directories, consider putting

alias cd="cd -P"

in your .bashrc so that $PWD or cwd always refers to a physical, not logical directory (and make sure CCACHE_BASEDIR also refers to a physical parent).

If you tune ccache correctly, a second working directory that uses a branch tracking trunk and is up to date with trunk and was gclient sync'ed at about the same time should build chrome in about 1/3 the time, and the cache misses as reported by ccache -s should barely increase.

This is especially useful if you use git-worktree and keep multiple local working directories going at once.

Build Thorium

Build Thorium (the "chrome" target), as well as chrome_sandbox, chromedriver, and thorium_shell (based on content_shell ), using the build.sh script in the root of the Thorium repo (where the # is the number of jobs). Assuming you have an 8 Core system:

$ ./build.sh 8

You could also manually issue the command (where -j is the number of jobs):

$ autoninja -C ~/chromium/src/out/thorium thorium chrome_sandbox chromedriver thorium_shell -j8

autoninja is a wrapper that automatically provides optimal values for the arguments passed to ninja. build.sh uses a custom autoninja in the depot_tools directory in Thorium.

You can get a list of all of the other build targets from GN by running gn ls out/thorium from the command line. To compile one, pass the GN label to Ninja with no preceding "//" (so, for //chrome/test:unit_tests use autoninja -C out/thorium chrome/test:unit_tests).

Run Thorium

Once it is built, you can simply run the browser:

$ out/thorium/thorium

Note - Copy and run clean.sh within this dir to clean up build artifacts.

Installing Thorium

Of course, you will probably want to make installation packages. To make .deb and .rpm packages run package.sh (where the # is the number of jobs) in the root of the repo:

$ ./package.sh 8

To make an appimage, copy the .deb to //thorium/infra/APPIMAGE/ and follow the Instructions therein.

Tests

See the Debugging section below, as well as Thorium UI Debug Shell.

Learn about how to use Chromedriver and Google Test at its GitHub page.

Update your checkout and revert to latest vanilla tip-o-tree Chromium.

Simply run trunk.sh in the root of the Thorium repo or execute the commands inside.

$ ./trunk.sh

Running test targets

Tests are split into multiple test targets based on their type and where they exist in the directory structure. To see what target a given unit test or browser test file corresponds to, the following command can be used:

$ gn refs out/Default --testonly=true --type=executable --all chrome/browser/ui/browser_list_unittest.cc
//chrome/test:unit_tests

In the example above, the target is unit_tests. The unit_tests binary can be built by running the following command:

$ autoninja -C out/Default unit_tests

Tips, tricks, and troubleshooting

More links

Debugging

If you have problems building, join us in the Thorium IRC Channel at #thorium on irc.libera.chat and ask there.

Notes for other distros

Arch Linux

Instead of running install-build-deps.sh to install build dependencies, run:

$ sudo pacman -S --needed automake autoconf base-devel curl xz squashfs-tools p7zip \
git tk python python-pkgconfig python-virtualenv python-oauth2client python-oauthlib \
perl gcc gcc-libs bison flex gperf pkgconfig dbus icoutils \
nss alsa-lib glib2 gtk3 nspr freetype2 cairo \
xorg-server-xvfb xorg-xdpyinfo

For the optional packages on Arch Linux:

  • php-cgi is provided with pacman
  • wdiff is not in the main repository but dwdiff is. You can get wdiff in AUR/yaourt

Crostini on ChromiumOS/ThoriumOS (Debian based)

First install the file and lsb-release commands for the script to run properly:

$ sudo apt-get install file lsb-release

Then invoke install-build-deps.sh with the --no-arm argument, because the ARM toolchain doesn't exist for this configuration:

$ sudo build/install-build-deps.sh --no-arm

Fedora

Instead of running build/install-build-deps.sh, run:

su -c 'yum install git python bzip2 tar pkgconfig atk-devel alsa-lib-devel \
bison binutils brlapi-devel bluez-libs-devel bzip2-devel cairo-devel \
cups-devel dbus-devel dbus-glib-devel expat-devel fontconfig-devel \
freetype-devel gcc-c++ glib2-devel glibc.i686 gperf glib2-devel \
gtk3-devel java-1.*.0-openjdk-devel libatomic libcap-devel libffi-devel \
libgcc.i686 libjpeg-devel libstdc++.i686 libX11-devel \
libXScrnSaver-devel libXtst-devel libxkbcommon-x11-devel ncurses-compat-libs \
nspr-devel nss-devel pam-devel pango-devel pciutils-devel \
pulseaudio-libs-devel zlib.i686 httpd mod_ssl php php-cli python-psutil wdiff \
xorg-x11-server-Xvfb'

The fonts needed by Blink's web tests can be obtained by following these instructions. For the optional packages:

  • php-cgi is provided by the php-cli package.
  • sun-java6-fonts is covered by the instructions linked above.

Gentoo

You can install the deps by doing a dry run of emerge www-client/chromium.

Happy Thorium Building!