Chromium Developer Documentation
 
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Google Chrome is built with open source code from Chromium.

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license, and examples are licensed under the BSD License.

FAQ

General

Q. What license is the source released under?
A. Chromium is a collection of a lot of software with a variety of licenses, but the main body of code is BSD. For more info, see the full breakdown.


WebKit

Q. How are you tracking WebKit?
A. The Chromium source code includes a copy of the WebKit source. We frequently snapshot against the WebKit tip of tree or specific branches according to our release needs.

Our goal is to reduce the size and complexity of the differences between the copy we maintain in order to work more effectively as a participant in the WebKit community and also to make periodic updates occur more smoothly.

Q. How are you interfacing with WebKit for upstream updates?
A. We take periodic snapshots of the WebKit code, making the necessary changes to integrate with Chromium. We are working with the WebKit team to push many of our changes upstream so that the merge process is simpler.

Ports

Q. Does Chromium support 64-bit architectures?
A. No, not yet.  It's more complicated than it first appears. However, you can run Chromium in Windows Vista 64 as a 32-bit application.

Q. Does Chromium build a working UI on Mac or Linux?
A. No, not yet.  Read more: Platforms and Priorities.

Q. Well when will it be ready on Mac and Linux?
A. Porting to a completely new platform is a lot of work that will take some time.  We are working extremely hard, and we expect some impressive results in the coming months.  You should expect to wait months, and not days, until there is something you can use.

Q. Can I run Chromium on Linux under Wine?
A. Sorta.  Better support for running under Wine was investigated, but we're concentrating our efforts on a full native port.  See the Wine AppDB entry for more information.

Q. Does Chromium on Linux use GTK or Qt?
A. GTK. It's not due to any dislike of Qt, but just because there's more experience on the team with GTK and it matches the existing Firefox dependency on Linux.  Please keep calm. :)

Misc

Q. I noticed that Gears source code has moved to the Chromium code repository. Why is that?
A. With Gears as a plug-in to Chromium we're carrying two copies of sqlite and two copies of V8. That's silly. We're integrating the code so Gears can run great in Chromium. We plan to continue to build Gears for other browsers out of the same code base.

Q. How can I develop extensions for Chromium like in Firefox?
A. Chromium doesn't have an extension system yet. This is something we're interested in adding in a future version. Note that Chromium does support NPAPI-style "plugins", such as Adobe Flash and Apple QuickTime.

Also see the Sandbox FAQ.