Iceraven Browser!

Definitely not brought to you by Mozilla!

Iceraven Browser is a web browser for Android, based on Mozilla's Fenix version of Firefox, GeckoView and Mozilla Android Components.

Our goal is to be a close fork of the new Firefox for Android that seeks to provide users with more options, more opportunities to customize (including a broad extension library), and more information about the pages they visit and how their browsers are interacting with those pages.

Notable features include:

about:config support
The ability to attempt to install a much longer list of add-ons than Mozilla's Fenix version of Firefox accepts. Currently the browser queries this AMO collection Most of them will not work, because they depend on code that Mozilla is still working on writing in android-components, but you may attempt to install them. If you don't see an add-on you want, you can request it.
Option to suspend tabs to avoid being killed for memory (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1807364)
Option not to display recently visited websites at HomePage
No warranties or guarantees of security or updates or even stability! Note that Iceraven Browser includes some unstable code written by Mozilla, with our own added modifications on top, all shipped with the stable version of GeckoView engine. Hence, the browser may contain bugs introduced upstream. Binaries are currently built automatically by our Github release automation. These binaries are signed with a debug key. When we finally publish this somewhere official like F-droid, we will sign the apks with a proper key suitable for public release. Due to the current way we create the releases and sign them, you may not want to rely on such "alpha" quality software as your primary web browser, as it will have bugs. So, use this browser only if you are comfortable with these limitations/potential risks.

Note/Disclaimer: Iceraven Browser could not exist without the hardworking folks at the Mozilla Corporation who work on the Mozilla Android Components and Firefox projects, but it is not an official Mozilla product, and is not provided, endorsed, vetted, approved, or secured by Mozilla.

In addition, we intend to try to cut down on telemetry and proprietary code to as great of an extent as possible as long as doing so does not compromise the user experience or make the fork too hard to maintain. Right now, we believe that no telemetry should be being sent to Mozilla anymore, but we cannot guarantee this; data may still be sent. Because of the way we have implemented this, the app may still appear to contain trackers when analyzed by tools that look for the presence of known tracking libraries. These detected trackers should actually be non-functional substitutes, many of which are sourced from here. If you catch the app actually sending data to Mozilla, Adjust, Leanplum, Firebase, or any other such service, please open an issue! Presumably any data that reaches Mozilla is governed by Mozilla's privacy policy, but as Iceraven Browser is, again not a Mozilla product, we can make no promises.

Iceraven Browser combines the power of Fenix (of which we are a fork) and the spirit of Fennec, with a respectful nod toward the grand tradition of Netscape Navigator, from which all Gecko-based projects came, including the earliest of our predecessors, the old Mozilla Phoenix and Mozilla Firefox desktop browsers.

That said, Iceraven Browser is an independent all-volunteer project, and has no affiliation with Netscape, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Mozila Phoenix, Debian, Debian Iceweasel, Parabola GNU/Linux-libre Iceweasel, America Online, or Verizon, among others. :) Basically, if you don't like the browser, it's not their fault. :)

📥 Installation

Right now, releases are published as .apk files, through Github. You should download and install the appropriate one for your device.

Determine what version you need. If you have a newer, 64-bit device, or a device with more than 4 GB of memory, you probably want the arm64-v8a version. Any ordinary phone or tablet should be able to use the armeabi-v7a version, but it will be limited to using no more than 4 GB of memory. You almost certainly don't want the x86 or x86_64 versions; they are in case you are running Android on a PC.
Download the APK for the latest release from the Releases page. Make sure to pick the version you chose in step 1.
Install the APK. You will need to enable installation of apps from "unknown" (to Google) sources, and installatiuon of apps by whatever app you used to open the downloaded APK (i.e. your browser or file manager). Android will try to dissuade you from doing this, and suggest that it is dangerous. Iceraven is a browser for people who enjoy danger.
Enjoy Iceraven. Make sure to install the add-ons that are essential for you in the main menu under "Add-Ons". You may want to set Iceraven as your device's default browser app. If you do this, it will be able to provide so-called "Chrome" custom tabs for other applications, allowing you to use your add-ons there.

🔨 Building

Set up the environment. We need the Android SDK at $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT and a Java JDK at $JAVA_HOME that isn't the Ubuntu Java 8 one. We want environment variables that look something like:

# Where does our system install the JDK? This is the right path for the Ubuntu Java 11 JDK, if it is installed.
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64
# Where did we install the Android SDK?
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/android-sdk/android-sdk-linux/

If we don't have the Android SDK, we can install it thusly on Linux:

mkdir -p $HOME/android-sdk/android-sdk-linux
cd $HOME/android-sdk/android-sdk-linux
mkdir -p licenses
echo "8933bad161af4178b1185d1a37fbf41ea5269c55" >> licenses/android-sdk-license
echo "d56f5187479451eabf01fb78af6dfcb131a6481e" >> licenses/android-sdk-license
echo "24333f8a63b6825ea9c5514f83c2829b004d1fee" >> licenses/android-sdk-license
mkdir cmdline-tools
cd cmdline-tools
wget "$(curl -s https://developer.android.com/studio | grep -oP "https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-[0-9]+_latest.zip")"
unzip commandlinetools-linux-*_latest.zip
cd ..

Clone the project.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

Go inside iceraven-browser. That's where the build is coordinated from.

cd iceraven-browser

Configure the project. For your personal use you need to sign the apk file. The simplest way to do this is to use the debug key that is auto-generated by Android SDK. This is not a great idea for releasing, but acceptable for your personal use. You can configure it as follows:

echo "autosignReleaseWithDebugKey=" >> local.properties

Build the project. To build the Iceraven-branded release APKs, you can do:

./gradlew app:assemblefenixForkRelease -PversionName="$(git describe --tags HEAD)"

(If you don't use the app: prefix, you might get complaints about the build system being unable to locate the objcopy executable.)

The APKs will show up in app/build/outputs/apk/fenix/forkRelease/.

Getting Involved

This is an all-volunteer project. No one is getting paid (at least not by the project itself.).

Therefore, everyone should feel free to open issues and pull requests. Join the club!

Developers are especially welcome, wanted, and needed.

I want to open a Pull Request!

We encourage you to participate in this open source project. We love Pull Requests, Bug Reports, ideas, (security) code reviews or any other kind of positive contribution.

How to Appease the Linter

If you are getting errors form ./gradelw ktlint, try running ./gradlew ktlintFormat to let ktlint decide how to lay out your code, instead of just yelling at you that you can't read its mind.

🙅 How to skip CI checks for PRs 🙅

If you want to skip Github CI checks in a PR, please add the following to the PR title exactly: [skip ci]. Also, please include the exact phrase [skip ci] in every commit message. This is to avoid Travis CI checks as well as skipping Github CI checks after merging the commits to the fork branch.

This is useful to do if you are sure that your changes do not effect the app's code (ex: changes to README.md).

🚀 Release automation 🚀

We have now setup release automation so that Github actions automatically trigger a release build and publish a release when we push a tag to the repository.

NOTE: The tag should be of the format iceraven-x.y.z, where x.y.z is the release version, for the automation to kick in and also so that the built app will have the correct version name.

✏️ I want to file an issue!

Great! We encourage you to participate in this open source project. We love Pull Requests, Bug Reports, ideas, (security) code reviews or any other kind of positive contribution.

To make it easier to triage, we have these issue requirements:

Please do your best to search for duplicate issues before filing a new issue so we can keep our issue board clean.
Every issue should have exactly one bug/feature request described in it. Please do not file meta feedback list tickets as it is difficult to parse them and address their individual points.
Feature Requests are better when they’re open-ended instead of demanding a specific solution -ie “I want an easier way to do X” instead of “add Y”
Issues are not the place to go off topic or debate.
While we do not yet have Community Participation Guidelines of our own, we ask that you show respect to everyone and treat others as you would like to be treated. Behavior that would violate Mozilla's Community Participation Guidelines is almost certainly unwelcome. However, as a small project without community managers, we cannot promise prompt and consistent enforcement.

Please keep in mind that even though a feature you have in mind may seem like a small ask, as a small team, we have to prioritize our planned work and every new feature adds complexity and maintenance and may take up design, research, product, and engineering time. We appreciate everyone’s passion but we will not be able to incorporate every feature request or even fix every bug. That being said, just because we haven't replied, doesn't mean we don't care about the issue, please be patient with our response times as we're very busy.

Note: If while pushing you encounter this error "Could not initialize class org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.InvokerHelper" and are currently on Java14 then downgrading your Java version to Java13 or lower can resolve the issue

Steps to downgrade Java Version on Mac with Brew:

Install Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)
run brew update
To uninstall your current java version, run sudo rm -fr /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/<jdk-version>
run brew tap homebrew/cask-versions
run brew search java
If you see java11, then run brew install java11
Verify java-version by running java -version

local.properties helpers

You can speed up local development by setting a few helper flags available in local.properties. Some flags will make it easy to work across multiple layers of the dependency stack - specifically, with android-components, geckoview or application-services.

Automatically sign release builds

To sign your release builds with your debug key automatically, add the following to <proj-root>/local.properties:

autosignReleaseWithDebugKey

With this line, release build variants will automatically be signed with your debug key (like debug builds), allowing them to be built and installed directly through Android Studio or the command line.

This is helpful when you're building release variants frequently, for example to test feature flags and or do performance analyses.

Building debuggable release variants

Nightly, Beta and Release variants are getting published to Google Play and therefore are not debuggable. To locally create debuggable builds of those variants, add the following to <proj-root>/local.properties:

debuggable

Setting raptor manifest flag

To set the raptor manifest flag in Nightly, Beta and Release variants, add the following to <proj-root>/local.properties:

raptorEnabled

Auto-publication workflow for application-services and glean

If you're making changes to these projects and want to test them in Fenix, auto-publication workflow is the fastest, most reliable way to do that.

In local.properties, specify a relative path to your local glean and/or application-services projects. E.g.:

autoPublish.glean.dir=../glean
autoPublish.application-services.dir=../application-services

Once these flags are set, your Fenix builds will include any local modifications present in these projects.

See a demo of auto-publication workflow in action.

In order to build successfully, you need to check out a commit in the dependency repository that has no breaking changes. The two best ways to do this are:

Run the <android-components>/tools/list_compatible_dependency_versions.py script to output a compatible commit
Check out the latest commit from main in this repository and the dependency repository. However, this may fail if there were breaking changes added recently to the dependency.

If you're trying to build fenix with a local ac AND a local GV, you'll have to use another method: see this doc.

Using Nimbus servers during local development

If you're working with the Nimbus experiments platform, by default for local development Fenix configures Nimbus to not use a server.

If you wish to use a Nimbus server during local development, you can add a https:// or file:// endpoint to the local.properties file.

nimbus.remote-settings.url

Testing experimental branches should be possible without a server.

Using custom Glean servers during local development

If you wish to use a custom Glean server during local development, you can add a https:// endpoint to the local.properties file.

glean.custom.server.url

GeckoView

For building with a local checkout of mozilla-central see Substituting Local GeckoView

License

This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/

mjlovesz/iceraven-browser