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0 pointsaftbit1y ago0 comments

I dunno, I've maintained a personal fork since around Chrome 100 or so. I am only targeting builds on Linux, I don't care about branding, and my patches are limited to about 300 lines total. The initial fork and figuring out the build process took probably 20 hours. After that, I've only had to spend on average around one hour per release of "engineering time" to keep my patches current. The build takes about an hour of machine time on my 5950x.

I'm not saying it's trivial by any means, but I don't think it's outside the range of a motivated hobbyist or a small startup. I don't think you really need "very capable engineers" personally. I barely know C or C++ and I haven't had too much trouble working with the codebase.

0 comments

8 comments · 2 top-level

BonoboIO1y ago· 4 in thread

Why are you running your own fork, if I may ask.

aftbitOP1y ago

Mostly for anti-fingerprinting features, but also just because I like to control the browser, since I spend all day in it.

dankwizard1y ago

When you sit down at the dinner table, do you have your own fork or share one with the guests?

Exact same logic applies.

RexM1y ago

Because you don’t want to share germs with other users of the browser? The logic makes no sense and I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.

dankwizard1y ago

People on this website often have difficulty detecting sarcasm, you're not alone.

bobajeff1y ago· 2 in thread

What kind of changes have you made with your patches? Did you make them yourself? I wanted to locate the code responsible for chromium's manifest v2 support so I could patch it back in once it's removed but I just couldn't get very far.

aftbitOP1y ago

Manifest v2 is a bit tricky, because there are really three changes overlapping with each other:

- Manifest v3 site permissions changes

- Removal of protected APIs (like the blocking version of chrome.webRequest)

- Chrome Store code review changes that prohibit remotely loading sources

For now, you can either do nothing (as the rollout is not yet complete), or set the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy to 2, which will still allow Mv2 extensions to be loaded.

That looks something like this on Linux:

    echo '{"DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled": false, "ExtensionManifestV2Availability": 2}' > /etc/chromium/policies/managed/default_managed_policy.json

Apparently there's a registry key on Windows? There are plenty of guides out there.

At the moment, the only thing I can find in Chromium that uses that preference is some code that reports to Google on the impact of disabling Mv2.[1]

The other option is to follow their issue tracker and git history, and just revert whatever patches you don't like.

1: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...

bobajeff1y ago

Thanks for your advice.

>The other option is to follow their issue tracker and git history, and just revert whatever patches you don't like.

Yeah, the first thing I tried was to look at the issue tracker but as you stated they haven't rolled this out yet. So I tried to find the code myself.

Google's documentation didn't really help that much for this and seemed to be outdated in many sections. So I went and tried to do some experiments on places that seemed like they may have something to do with extension APIs.

I remember there was some build generated code that I was looking into because it related to the extension APIs but I was never able to test my guesses very well since my machine is not super fast and compiling takes so long. So eventually I threw in the towel.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

8 comments · 2 top-level

BonoboIO1y ago· 4 in thread

Why are you running your own fork, if I may ask.

aftbitOP1y ago

Mostly for anti-fingerprinting features, but also just because I like to control the browser, since I spend all day in it.

dankwizard1y ago

When you sit down at the dinner table, do you have your own fork or share one with the guests?

Exact same logic applies.

RexM1y ago

Because you don’t want to share germs with other users of the browser? The logic makes no sense and I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.

dankwizard1y ago

People on this website often have difficulty detecting sarcasm, you're not alone.

bobajeff1y ago· 2 in thread

aftbitOP1y ago

Manifest v2 is a bit tricky, because there are really three changes overlapping with each other:

- Manifest v3 site permissions changes

- Removal of protected APIs (like the blocking version of chrome.webRequest)

- Chrome Store code review changes that prohibit remotely loading sources

For now, you can either do nothing (as the rollout is not yet complete), or set the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy to 2, which will still allow Mv2 extensions to be loaded.

That looks something like this on Linux:

    echo '{"DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled": false, "ExtensionManifestV2Availability": 2}' > /etc/chromium/policies/managed/default_managed_policy.json

Apparently there's a registry key on Windows? There are plenty of guides out there.

At the moment, the only thing I can find in Chromium that uses that preference is some code that reports to Google on the impact of disabling Mv2.[1]

The other option is to follow their issue tracker and git history, and just revert whatever patches you don't like.

1: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...

bobajeff1y ago

Thanks for your advice.

>The other option is to follow their issue tracker and git history, and just revert whatever patches you don't like.

Yeah, the first thing I tried was to look at the issue tracker but as you stated they haven't rolled this out yet. So I tried to find the code myself.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse