Add support for Alpine Linux

[vecchioBlister]

uname -srvmo

Linux 6.12.30-0-lts #1-Alpine SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC 2025-05-23 08:01:35 x86_64 GNU/Linux

/etc/os-release

NAME="Alpine Linux"
ID=alpine
VERSION_ID=3.23.0_alpha20250612
PRETTY_NAME="Alpine Linux edge"
HOME_URL="https://alpinelinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/issues"

[fmarier]

It looks like it would require a custom build: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-dev/c/mIm3D3t-I_4/m/bMkAlJdhBQAJ

[wknapik]

IIUC, you could install glibc on Alpine, which may be a way of making Brave work on that distro.

If you can confirm that this does work, with steps to reproduce the setup, we could look into adding support.

[vecchioBlister]

I have attempted to build brave with glibc on alpine, though got stuck at a missing symbol, posix_fallocate64; it seems like this is a known problem when compiling certain packages on Alpine, though I don't really know how to solve it or get around it.

Terminal build log

$ npm run init
npm warn Unknown builtin config "globalignorefile". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.
npm warn Unknown builtin config "python". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.

> brave@1.82.100 init
> node ./scripts/init.js

Performing initial checkout of brave-core
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src/brave
> git rev-parse HEAD
brave-core repo at /home/user/brave-browser/src/brave is at commit ID ee4763b7044a080b8e7efabc9f739afba4e5a801
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src/brave
> npm install
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src/brave
> npm run sync -- --init
npm warn Unknown builtin config "globalignorefile". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.
npm warn Unknown builtin config "python". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.
npm warn Unknown env config "globalignorefile". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.
npm warn Unknown env config "python". This will stop working in the next major version of npm.

> brave-core@1.82.100 sync
> node ./build/commands/scripts/sync.js --init

install depot_tools...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src/brave
> git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git /home/user/brave-browser/src/brave/vendor/depot_tools
Cloning into '/home/user/brave-browser/src/brave/vendor/depot_tools'...
remote: Sending approximately 60.34 MiB ...
remote: Total 65020 (delta 45624), reused 65020 (delta 45624)
Receiving objects: 100% (65020/65020), 60.32 MiB | 44.47 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (45624/45624), done.
...install depot_tools done
gclient sync...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src
> git rev-parse HEAD
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src
> git rev-parse refs/tags/139.0.7258.42
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser/src
> git log -n 1 --pretty=format:%h%d
Chromium repo needs sync.
  target is refs/tags/139.0.7258.42 at commit [missing]
  current commit is 06d5b4da8 (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) at commit 06d5b4da864c3e1d2118ff96d92d1b759359e5a4
  latest successful sync is {}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/user/brave-browser
> gclient sync --nohooks --reset --upstream --revision src@refs/tags/139.0.7258.42 --force
Error relocating /home/user/brave-browser/src/brave/vendor/depot_tools/bootstrap-2@3.11.8.chromium.35_bin/python3/bin/python3.11: posix_fallocate64: symbol not found
[E2025-07-20T22:54:19.911062+02:00 4094 0 builder.go:223] 
Error relocating /home/user/.cache/vpython-root.1000/store/cpython+l5fnajrvijf7cvdkjqmbicg3i8/contents/bin/python3: posix_fallocate64: symbol not found

failed to generate venv derivation: failed to build package: python_venv-3kus64buugeouala7rafcpnv6o: failed to execute builder: exit status 127
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Build requirements so far: eudev-dev gcc gcompat git? libc-utils libcstdc++-dev? linux-headers make musl-dev npm py3-distlib py3-setuptools

[wknapik]

@vecchioBlister currently, building a fully functional browser from source requires a number of parameters, some of which aren't public. We're looking into removing that limitation. For now, if you'd like to make Brave work on Alpine, you'd have to install glibc and use a binary release. If you do manage to make that work and the setup is simple enough and non-invasive enough that it could be included in install.sh, we could add it to the script. Otherwise, it could at least go on a wiki, so others can benefit.