Brave Browser
Overview
This repository holds the build tools needed to build the Brave desktop browser for macOS, Windows, and Linux. In particular, it fetches and syncs code from the projects we define in package.json
and src/brave/DEPS
:
- Chromium
- Fetches code via
depot_tools
. - sets the branch for Chromium (ex: 65.0.3325.181).
- Fetches code via
- brave-core
- Mounted at
src/brave
. - Maintains patches for 3rd party Chromium code.
- Mounted at
- adblock-rust
- Implements Brave's ad-block engine.
- Linked through brave/adblock-rust-ffi.
Downloads
You can visit our website to get the latest stable release.
Other repositories
For other versions of our browser, please see:
- iOS - brave/brave-ios
Contributing
Please see the contributing guidelines.
Community
Join the Q&A community if you'd like to get more involved with Brave. You can ask for help, discuss features you'd like to see, and a lot more. We'd love to have your help so that we can continue improving Brave.
Help us translate Brave to your language by submitting translations at https://www.transifex.com/brave/brave/.
Follow @brave on Twitter for important news and announcements.
Install prerequisites
Follow the instructions for your platform:
Clone and initialize the repo
Once you have the prerequisites installed, you can get the code and initialize the build environment.
git clone git@github.com:brave/brave-browser.git
cd brave-browser
npm install
# this takes 30-45 minutes to run
# the Chromium source is downloaded which has a large history
npm run init
brave-core based android builds should use npm run init -- --target_os=android --target_arch=arm
(or whatever cpu type you want to build for)
You can also set the target_os and target_arch for init and build using
npm config set target_os android
npm config set target_arch arm
Build Brave
The default build type is component.
# start the component build compile
npm run build
To do a release build:
# start the release compile
npm run build Release
brave-core based android builds should use npm run build -- --target_os=android --target_arch=arm
or set the npm config variables as specified above for init
Build Configurations
Running a release build with npm run build Release
can be very slow and use a lot of RAM especially on Linux with the Gold LLVM plugin.
To run a statically linked build (takes longer to build, but starts faster)
npm run build -- Static
To run a debug build (Component build with is_debug=true)
npm run build -- Debug
Brave staff may also want to try Goma for faster builds.
Run Brave
To start the build:
npm start [Release|Component|Static|Debug]
Update Brave
npm run sync -- [--force] [--init] [--create] [brave_core_ref]
This will attempt to stash your local changes in brave-core, but it's safer to commit local changes before running this
npm run sync
will (depending on the below flags):
- 📥 Update sub-projects (chromium, brave-core) to latest commit of a git ref (e.g. tag or branch)
- 🤕 Apply patches
- 🔄 Update gclient DEPS dependencies
- ⏩ Run hooks (e.g. to perform
npm install
on child projects)
flag | Description |
---|---|
[no flags] |
updates chromium if needed and re-applies patches. If the chromium version did not change it will only re-apply patches that have changed. Will update child dependencies only if any project needed updating during this script run **Use this if you want the script to manage keeping you up to date instead of pulling or switching branch manually. ** |
--force |
updates both Chromium and brave-core to the latest remote commit for the current brave-core branch and the Chromium ref specified in brave-browser/package.json (e.g. master or 74.0.0.103 ). Will re-apply all patches. Will force update all child dependencies **Use this if you're having trouble and want to force the branches back to a known state. ** |
--init |
force update both Chromium and brave-core to the versions specified in brave-browser/package.json and force updates all dependent repos - same as npm run init |
--ignore_chromium |
Will not update the chromium version when applicable. Useful if you want to avoid a minor update when not ready for the larger build time a chromium update may result in. A warning will be output about the current code state expecting a different chromium version. Your build may fail as a result. |
Run npm run sync brave_core_ref
to checkout the specified brave-core ref and update all dependent repos including chromium if needed
Scenarios
Create a new branch
brave-core> git checkout -b branch_name
Checkout an existing branch or tag
brave-core> git fetch origin
brave-core> git checkout [-b] branch_name
brave-core> npm run sync
...Updating 2 patches...
...Updating child dependencies...
...Running hooks...
Update the current branch to latest remote
brave-core> git pull
brave-core> npm run sync
...Updating 2 patches...
...Updating child dependencies...
...Running hooks...
init
, will always result in a longer build and will remove any pending changes in your brave-core working directory)
Reset to latest brave-browser master, and brave-core master (via brave-browser> git checkout master
brave-browser> git pull
brave-browser> npm run sync -- --init
When you know that DEPS didn't change, but .patch files did (quickest attempt to perform a mini-sync before a build)
brave-core> git checkout featureB
brave-core> git pull
brave-browser> npm run apply_patches
...Applying 2 patches...
Enabling third-party APIs:
- Google Safe Browsing: Get an API key with SafeBrowsing API enabled from https://console.developers.google.com/. Update the
GOOGLE_API_KEY
environment variable with your key as per https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys to enable Google SafeBrowsing.
Troubleshooting
See Troubleshooting for solutions to common problems.