# Contributing to Chromium: an illustrated guide

DevFeed: [Contributing to Chromium: an illustrated guide](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/contributing-to-chromium-an-illustrated-guide-35509.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://meowni.ca/posts/chromium-101/>)

Author: Monica Dinculescu

Published: 2015-02-10T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Monica Dinculescu](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/monica-dinculescu.md>)

Topics: [Chromium](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/chromium.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [builds](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/builds.md>), [debug](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/debug.md>)

Tags: [blog-post](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog-post.md>), [build](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/build.md>), [chromium](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/chromium.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [debug](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/debug.md>), [guide](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/guide.md>), [release](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/release.md>)

## AI overview

A practical guide to contributing to Chromium, covering the process from checking out the source code through landing a change in the Chromium repository. It also discusses setup requirements, build configurations, and debugging considerations.

## Source excerpt

I gave a talk about how to get started contributing to Chromium, but it wasn't recorded, and my slides by themselves look like cold-medicine induced hallucinations (which, to be fair, they were). So instead, here is a giant blog post that will take you through every step from "checking out the code" to "landing the code in the Chromium repo". It will also come in super handy for mild to moderate cases of insomnia. If you just want a TL;DR or a refresher of the commands you might need, check out the slides. They're basically bullet points without the running commentary. Warning: this is a long post. The bug we're fixing is silly, but will get us writing actual Chromium code. If you want a real good-first-bug to fix after this, here is a nice list. Usually unassigned bugs (with no owner) are free for the taking, but it can also happen that a bug will be assigned to a human who is not actually working on it. Check the activity on it - if there haven't been any activities in a while, leave a message on the bug or ping the owner and tell them you'd like to work on it! Get your computer ready Chrome is giant. It needs a beefy machine (we recommend a 64-bit OS, with at least 8GB of RAM. A separate SSD to hold/build your code will make your life infinitely more pleasant), and a couple dozen goat sacrifices. Even then, building Chromium from scratch is slow. Snails run the half mile faster (fact). This is something you might as well get used to. We have a pretty solid set of instructions on how to get everything set up. I promise you this page has been used and reviewed a billion times, it's up to date, and every step in it is important. Don't skip steps because you think you don't need them. You do. However, I'll tell you about the custom things that I use that aren't on that page, which I'm pretty proud of. I always build Release builds, because they're faster. This means I don't get as many debug symbols as I would like. That's fine for me, because I'm a chicken and prett