Building Chromium from Source

[jesmith]

I have to rebuild chromium from source (I need to turn NPAPI support back on). I got the sources, but immediately ran into a dependency problem (porteus not including python is the first one I hit). Before I start the process of building all my dependencies from sources, would it make more sense to set up a Slackware 14 machine and build chromium there?

[Slaxmax]

NPAPI support was removed from Linux in Chromium 35.
If you need NPAPI download Chromium below version 35.
If you need Chromium 35 or higher with flash player (pepperflash) download the packages from alienbob
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/chromium/
and pepperflash
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbu ... sh-plugin/

see too
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/chromiu ... and-pepper

[jesmith]

I already found a patch that purports to add NPAPI support back in for linux (it's just one ifdef change). I'd rather be up-to-date with Chromium if possible, which is why I want to try building with that patch.

(This has nothing to do with Flash. I need NPAPI for a different plugin that makes chrome support my multi-touch hardware.)

I've installed Slackware 14.1 on a VM on my Mac, and I've already made some pretty good progress with the build. So I think that's probably what I'm going to do.

-Joshua

[fanthom]

if you reckon that adding missing deps to porteus will take longer than installing full slackware then you should go with slackware.
just make sure that slackware version matches the one on which porteus was based

[francois]

And please share your chromium module. It would be appreciated.

[wread]

@jesmith
Python is contained in 07-printing. Install it and find what you still need.
Months ago, I compiled chromium version 25 from source and I didn't find it so bad at all!
Don't be afraid! You can make it; only by doing you can learn...

Good luck!

[jesmith]

It's still crunching along. The following things were missing from Slackware 14.1:

pulseaudio
json-c
PAM (I had to add #include <sys/resource.h> to one file to get this to compile)

Also, there were a couple files in the chromium source that include gssapi.h that I had to change to gss/api.h

The other big gotcha is that I'm building on a 32-bit system (of course), but chromium includes clang++ built for a 64-bit system, which means it can't compile anything. The workaround it to rebuild clang++

tools/clang/scripts/update.sh --force-local-build --without-android

I also had to crank the VM I'm using up to 2GB of RAM, because it couldn't link with only 1GB.

Looks like it might finally finish compiling today. I'll keep you posted...

[jesmith]

Hmph. Well it turns out that the patch I found which alleged to re-enable NPAPI support doesn't actually work. So after all that, I have a brand-spanking-new clean build that still doesn't support NPAPI plugins. Grrr.

Making a porteus module you could install would actually be a lot of work, because chromium doesn't have anything like "make install."

So at this point, I'm not inclined to do anything more with this adventure. Instead, I guess I'm going to go figure out how to convert the existing NPAPI plugin I have into one of the other supported plugin formats.

-Joshua

[wread]

Maybe chromium-36 is what you need; this is alien's Bob compilation. Try it!

Regards 8)

[jesmith]

I will! But NPAPI support went away in 35, so I'm probably screwed. I'm pretty sure the next step is for me to just bite the bullet and create the functionality I need using native message APIs instead of a plugin.

[francois]

Here is an interesting article from linux insider on the differences between chromium and chrome, that seems to favor chromium in terms of security:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/79510.html
It seem that the little advantage of using chromium is anihilated by the fact that you would log in with a gmail account.