Install prerequisites

Follow the instructions for your platform:

• macOS
• iOS
• Windows
• Linux/Android

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:udaybansal19/brave-core.git path-to-your-project-folder/src/brave
cd path-to-your-project-folder/src/brave
npm install

# the Chromium source is downloaded, which has a large history (gigabytes of data)
# this might take really long to finish depending on internet speed

npm run init

brave-core based android builds should use npm run init -- --target_os=android --target_arch=arm (or whichever CPU type you want to build for) brave-core based iOS builds should use npm run init -- --target_os=ios

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 Ping

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

brave-core based iOS builds should use the Xcode project found in ios/brave-ios/App. You can open this project directly or run npm run ios_bootstrap -- --open_xcodeproj to have it opened in Xcode. See the iOS Developer Environment for more information on iOS builds.

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

NOTE: the build will take a while to complete. Depending on your processor and memory, it could potentially take a few hours.

Run Ping

To start the build:

npm start [Release|Component|Static|Debug]

Update Ping

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):

1. 📥 Update sub-projects (chromium, brave-core) to latest commit of a git ref (e.g. tag or branch)
2. 🤕 Apply patches
3. 🔄 Update gclient DEPS dependencies
4. ⏩ 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 branches 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
--sync_chromium (true/false)	Will force or skip the chromium version update 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.
-D, --delete_unused_deps	Will delete from the working copy any dependencies that have been removed since the last sync. Mimics gclient sync -D.

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-browser> cd src/brave
brave-browser/src/brave> git checkout -b branch_name

Checkout an existing branch or tag:

brave-browser/src/brave> git fetch origin
brave-browser/src/brave> git checkout [-b] branch_name
brave-browser/src/brave> npm run sync
...Updating 2 patches...
...Updating child dependencies...
...Running hooks...

Update the current branch to the latest remote:

brave-browser/src/brave> git pull
brave-browser/src/brave> npm run sync
...Updating 2 patches...
...Updating child dependencies...
...Running hooks...

Reset to latest brave-browser master and brave-core master (via init, will always result in a longer build and will remove any pending changes in your brave-core working directory):

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-browser/src/brave> git checkout featureB
brave-browser/src/brave> git pull
brave-browser/src/brave> cd ../..
brave-browser> npm run apply_patches
...Applying 2 patches...

Enabling third-party APIs:

1. 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.

Development

• Security rules from Chromium
• IPC review guidelines (in particular this reference)
• Brave's internal security guidelines (for employees only)
• Rust usage