Source: chromium
Version: 117.0.5938.149-1
Severity: wishlist
User: debian-s390@lists.debian.org
Usertags: s390x
User: debian-arm@lists.debian.org
Usertags: armel
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-s390@lists.debian.org
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-arm@lists.debian.org

Dear Maintainer,

Chromium could be built on Debian s390x or armel, but it would probably
require some upstream work.

For now when trying to build on my Linux One s390x VM I got this:

ERROR at //base/allocator/partition_allocator/partition_alloc.gni:25:3:
Assertion failed.
   assert(false, "Unknown CPU: $current_cpu")
Unknown CPU: s390x

Let me know what direction to go if it's worth trying to add support for
s390x or not.
I would definitely like to have armel supported, maybe it's a more
suitable target. (https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi)

Once both architectures are built DEP-8 tests will be able to use
chromium-driver on them.

Related to the riscv64 request: #1051998

You have several options. If upstream is hostile to adding support for
your architecture (as is the case for ppc64el, which has roughly 50
architecture-specific patches in debian), you're welcome to become a
chromium co-maintainer and maintain a set of patches that enable s390x
or armel or whatever. Once a month or so, you'll probably need to
refresh your patches to ensure they apply/build/function properly. And
if you stop maintaining the patch set, your architecture will be
dropped from the chromium packages.

If upstream is receptive to adding support for your architecture, you
can send patches upstream to get chromium building on it. Once it can
successfully build on your architecture with minimal or no changes, I'd
be happy to enable the architecture. For example i386 is currently
supported because it mostly works, and only requires 1-2 patches to get
it building. If your architecture is already in that state, let me know
and I can give it a try on a porter box and then upload to experimental.

Hello William!

I'm afraid this is far beyond the possibilities that a Debian maintainer
has. Unless Chromium upstream has full support for a given architecture,
it's next to impossible to support the browser or its engine on that
particular platform.

WebKit and KHTML are currently the most portable browsers followed by Firefox
while Chromium really only works on the targets that Google supports.

And unless you have a dedicated maintainer, it's next to impossible to get
Google upstream support a new architecture.

Adrian

Thank you both for your very quick replies !

I will think a bit about it to see what could be done.
Because for now chromium is the only web-driver available in Debian.