How can I help port Google Chrome to Linux?

Question

I really like Chrome, and the explicit implementation of port help will enhance my knowledge base.

Where to begin?

What are the main similarities and differences between code that will run on Windows and Linux?

What skills and software do I need?

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Note:

The official site is focused on Visual Studio!
Netbeans or Eclipse are my only options.
I will not pay Microsoft for help with an open source project.

Answer 1

EDIT: (2/6/10)

A beta version of Chrome was released for Linux. Although it is marked as beta, it works fine on my Ubuntu box. You can download it from Google:

http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=linux

EDIT: (5/31/09)

Since I answered this question, more new changes (actually Chromium) for Linux have appeared in Chrome: an alpha version has been released. This means that it is not fully operational.

If you're using Ubuntu, you're in luck: add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main 

Then at the command prompt:

 aptitude update aptitude install chromium-browser 

Do not forget s / jaunty / yourUbuntuVersion / if necessary. Alternatively, you can use s / aptitude / apt-get / if you insist.

And .... Yes , it works. I am typing this in my newly installed Chromium browser right now!

The assembly is placed on the launchpad and gives me some security warnings during installation, which I quickly ignored. Here's the website: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

Original answer:

Linux build instructions

Answer 2

Read this article about Chrome and Open Source on Linux:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/02/google-unveils-chrome-source-code-and-linux-port

The Google V8 JavaScript Engine is also open source and available here if you want to contribute;

http://code.google.com/p/v8/

If you want to contribute to Chronium, here are the instructions:

http://dev.chromium.org/developers/contributing-code

Chromium is an open source browser project whose goal is to create a safer, faster and more stable way for all Internet users to use the Internet. This site contains design documents, architecture reviews, testing information, and much more to help you learn how to build and work with chrome source code.

Here's how you can get started:

http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/getting-started

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EDIT: Two more questions have been added to the original question.

The following software is required to create on Linux:

• Subversion> = 1.4
• pkg-config> = 0.20
• Python> = 2.4
• Perl> = 5.x
• gcc / g ++> = 4.2
• bison> = 2.3
• flex> = 2.5.34
• gperf> = 3.0.3
• libnss3-dev> = 3.12

In Ubuntu 8.04, you can get all of the above:

 $ sudo apt-get install subversion pkg-config python perl g++ bison flex gperf libnss3-dev 

Note : no working Chrome-based browser on Linux. Although many Chromium submodules build on Linux and several pass unit tests, all that is executed is the "all tests pass" command line executable.