Project:Chromium/TODO

This page is a TODO list for improvements to the Chromium ebuild (or other project-supported browsers).

Items are added as we come up with them - there is no particular order to this list!

• Properly SLOT Chromium: Upstream allow side-by-side installs, and there's no reason that we should have to rebuild to check if something is the same between `stable` and `dev`
  • This appears to be guarded by `is_chrome_branded` i.e. only for google chrome. I bet we can do better.
• Binpkg support: The ebuild is (theoretically) wired up to to be distributed with USE=bindist, with the internal ffmpeg being built and discarded, and `ffmpeg-chromium` being built locally to support this. https://bugs.gentoo.org/542480 seems to be the remaining blocker
  • There may be another approach that doesn't need the USE, check ebuild comments and logic then take a look at how other distros handle it.
    • My current understanding is that the GN option proprietary_codecs gates h264 and aac, so if built without and a libffmpeg that _can_ handle those formats is provided Chromium will still refuse to play them. This needs to be validated, but if it's _not_ the case we can simplify the proprietary_codecs logic.
• Bundled Toolchains: come up with a fallback option for generating toolchain tarballs ourselves for x86_64 in case upstream CI falls over
  • and ideally aarch64; upstream do not support aarch64-linux but _do_ provide tarballs for aarch64-macos - maybe we can leverage some of that?
• Review https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/chromium-tools.git/ - Improve existing automation, drop obsolete (it'll stay in Git history)
• Revisit GCC builds and patchset - Possibly start by checking out Lauren's work: https://codeberg.org/selfisekai/copium/
• Get Musl builds working and start upstreaming patches - ideally we don't want to carry a massive patchset, and hopefully only for `dev` - If we stay on top of things we should be able to ask for changes to be cherry-picked on Gerrit.
  • Comparing the Chimera build would be a great place to start!

Completed:

• Unbundle binaries added in M127
  • We generate our own tarballs now, and explicitly do not include the binaries.
• Re-add support for bundled toolchains (downloaded as tarballs from upstream): Added in M134.
• Make QT5 optional
  • Gentoo is dropping support for QT5 where possible, and Chromium should be no exception. [1] is the current blocker.
    • Resolved in [2]