Note: it is not possible to build a binary functionally equivalent to a Chromecast. This is to build a single-page content embedder with similar functionality to Cast products.
Are you a Google employee? See go/building-android-cast instead.
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Most development is done on Ubuntu. Other distros may or may not work; see the Linux instructions for some suggestions.
Building the Android client on Windows or Mac is not supported and doesn’t work.
depot_tools
Clone the depot_tools
repository:
$ git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
Add depot_tools
to the end of your PATH (you will probably want to put this
in your ~/.bashrc
or ~/.zshrc
). Assuming you cloned depot_tools
to /path/to/depot_tools
:
$ export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/depot_tools"
Create a chromium
directory for the checkout and change to it (you can call
this whatever you like and put it wherever you like, as
long as the full path has no spaces):
$ mkdir ~/chromium && cd ~/chromium
$ fetch --nohooks android
If you don’t want the full repo history, you can save a lot of time by
adding the --no-history
flag to fetch
.
Expect the command to take 30 minutes on even a fast connection, and many hours on slower ones.
If you’ve already installed the build dependencies on the machine (from another
checkout, for example), you can omit the --nohooks
flag and fetch
will automatically execute gclient runhooks
at the end.
When fetch
completes, it will have created a hidden .gclient
file and a
directory called src
in the working directory. The remaining instructions
assume you have switched to the src
directory:
$ cd src
If you have an existing Linux checkout, you can add Android support by
appending target_os = ['android']
to your .gclient
file (in the
directory above src
):
$ echo "target_os = [ 'android' ]" >> ../.gclient
Then run gclient sync
to pull the new Android dependencies:
$ gclient sync
(This is the only difference between fetch android
and fetch chromium
.)
Once you have checked out the code, run
$ build/install-build-deps-android.sh
to get all of the dependencies you need to build on Linux, plus all of the Android-specific dependencies (you need some of the regular Linux dependencies because an Android build includes a bunch of the Linux tools and utilities).
Once you’ve run install-build-deps
at least once, you can now run the
Chromium-specific hooks, which will download additional binaries and other
things you might need:
$ gclient runhooks
Optional: You can also install API keys if you want your build to talk to some Google services, but this is not necessary for most development and testing purposes.
Chromium uses Ninja as its main build tool along with
a tool called GN
to generate .ninja
files. You can create any number of build directories
with different configurations. To create a build directory which builds Chrome
for Android, run:
$ gn gen --args='target_os="android" is_cast_android=true' out/Default
Default
with another name, but
it should be a subdirectory of out
.gn help
on the command line or read the
quick start guide.Also be aware that some scripts (e.g. tombstones.py
, adb_gdb.py
)
require you to set CHROMIUM_OUTPUT_DIR=out/Default
.
Build cast_shell_apk
with Ninja using the command:
$ autoninja -C out/Default cast_shell_apk
(autoninja
is a wrapper that automatically provides optimal values for the
arguments passed to ninja
.)
cast_shell_apk
on a deviceMake sure your Android device is plugged in via USB, and USB Debugging is enabled.
To enable USB Debugging:
You may also be prompted to allow access to your PC once your device is plugged in.
You can check if the device is connected by running:
third_party/android_sdk/public/platform-tools/adb devices
Which prints a list of connected devices. If not connected, try unplugging and reattaching your device.
autoninja -C out/Release cast_shell_apk
And deploy it to your Android device:
out/Default/bin/cast_shell_apk install
# Or to install and run:
out/Default/bin/cast_shell_apk run "http://google.com"
The app will appear on the device as «Chromium».
For information on running tests, see Android Test Instructions.