Compilation issue with Ubuntu 24.04

[rpstew]

I am trying to compile ungoogled chromium from the source code on Ubuntu 23.04 by following:
https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-debian

root@iwplayer:/home/iwplayer# cat /etc/os-release | grep NAME
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 23.04"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_CODENAME=lunar
UBUNTU_CODENAME=lunar

# Install initial packages
sudo apt install -y devscripts equivs
# Clone repository and switch to it (optional if are already in it)
git clone https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-debian.git
cd ungoogled-chromium-debian
# Initiate the submodules (optional if they are already initiated)
git submodule update --init --recursive
pre-setup.log

# Prepare the local source
debian/rules setup
setup.log

# Install missing packages
sudo mk-build-deps -i debian/control
rm ungoogled-chromium-build-deps_*
after-setup.log

# Build the package
dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
dpkg-buildpackage.log

/usr/include/stdlib.h:32:10: fatal error: 'stddef.h' file not found
#include <stddef.h>

[rpstew]

The hardware being used it a Seneca VWC-MINI with 16 GB of RAM:
https://www.senecadata.com/industry-solutions/video-wall-controllers/seneca-vwc-mini-video-wall-controller/

[iskunk]

Hello @rpstew,

There are a couple of issues here:

1. The process you're running through is the "classic" ungoogled-chromium Debian build, which I'm afraid has suffered from lack of maintenance. I have put together an alternate process that supports the current Chromium version, and that I will gladly vouch for.
2. But that is intended for Debian. You're building on Ubuntu, so in addition to converting regular Chromium to ungoogled-chromium, you'll also need to convert Debian Chromium to Ubuntu Chromium.

I maintain a set of pre-compiled ungoogled-chromium packages for the various Ubuntu releases in the XtraDeb Apps PPA, so if you are just looking for a build, that may be a convenient option. (Source packages are available as well.) If you would rather build it by your own hand, I'll be happy to describe the process, but do note that it is a bit involved the first couple times. Please let me know which route you would prefer.

As an aside, 23.04/lunar is no longer supported by Ubuntu proper. Is installing 24.04 not an option? It released just a few days ago, and it is an LTS version, so you'll be able to use it safely for a long time.

[rpstew]

Greetings @iskunk,

Thanks for the quick response! I had actually tried Ubuntu 24.04, but assumed it wasn't supported based on the info in the unmaintained url. I will move back to Ubuntu 24.04. Are the instructions you gave for 23.04 also good for 24.04?

Also I do need to build from sources.

[rpstew]

Hello @iskunk,

I got through the step 7 (make) of the alternate process you mentioned with out issue. I just need to install ungoogled chromium now. Do I need to follow step 8 and use dpkg-build-package in order to install ungoogled chromium? I've never used the dpkg-buildpackage command. Where and how do I used that command?

[iskunk]

Are the instructions you gave for 23.04 also good for 24.04?

All the more so for 24.04, since I haven't worked on 23.04 for some time.

Also I do need to build from sources.

You can if you wish to do so. Many users prefer to compile from source themselves, rather than rely on a binary package built by a third party. (But if you don't care either way, then why go to the trouble?)

I got through the step 7 (make) of the alternate process you mentioned with out issue. I just need to install ungoogled chromium now. Do I need to follow step 8 and use dpkg-build-package in order to install ungoogled chromium? I've never used the dpkg-buildpackage command. Where and how do I used that command?

Okay, a few points to cover here:

• After step 7, you have Debian source packages. These packages only contain source code. They must be [unpacked and] compiled to produce the binary packages (.deb files) that can then be installed on the system.

• You can use dpkg-buildpackage or debuild to build the source package. It seemed like you already had experience with the former, from your first post on this thread. But if you've never compiled Debian source packages before... then I'm afraid you've chosen a poor example to learn with!

• Even then, the package will not build, because it has not been adapted to the Ubuntu environment. For that, you'll need the scripts in the xtradeb-convert repo. Before you run through the ungoogled-chromium-debian process, do this:

  $ /path/to/xtradeb-convert/pkg/chromium.sh /path/to/chromium-source/debian noble
  

  That will make the necessary adjustments for 24.04.

To reiterate, building from source is not necessary to get ungoogled-chromium on Ubuntu. I'm assuming that building from source (in and of itself) is important to you, and so am giving you the information above on that basis.

[rpstew]

Hello @iskunk ,

I tried your instructions today from scratch and ran into a compilation issue in step 7:

make
dpkg-parsechangelog: error: takes no non-option arguments

Use --help for program usage information.
dpkg-parsechangelog: error: takes no non-option arguments

Use --help for program usage information.
make: *** No rule to make target '/debian/source/format', needed by 'stage-1.stamp'.  Stop.

I believe the only difference is the chromium version. When it worked last week I was using 123.0.6312.105-1 and today I ended up with version 124.0.6367.118-1

[rpstew]

@iskunk

I went back to using version 123.0.6312.105-1 so I did the following steps after a successful step 7:

• tar xvf ungoogled-chromium_123.0.6312.105.orig.tar.xz
• tar xvf ungoogled-chromium_123.0.6312.105-1~deb13u1.debian.tar.xz
• git clone https://rpstewart@bitbucket.org/xtradeb/xtradeb-convert.git
• ./xtradeb-convert/pkg/chromium.sh /home/iwplayer/ungoogled-chromium-debian/convert3/after-step-7/debian/
• dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc

I had unmet dependencies:

dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source package ungoogled-chromium
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source version 123.0.6312.105-1~deb13u1xtradeb1.2404.1
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source distribution noble
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source changed by XtraDeb User <xtradeb.user@example.com>
dpkg-buildpackage: info: host architecture amd64
 dpkg-source --before-build .
dpkg-checkbuilddeps: error: Unmet build dependencies: lld-16 clang-16 clang-format-16 libclang-rt-16-dev rustc (>= 1.70.0+dfsg1-5) ninja-build elfutils flex yasm xvfb gperf bison nodejs rollup valgrind xcb-proto libx11-xcb-dev libxshmfence-dev libgl-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libegl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libopenh264-dev generate-ninja mesa-common-dev rapidjson-dev libva-dev libxt-dev libgbm-dev libpng-dev libxss-dev libelf-dev libpci-dev libcap-dev libdrm-dev libffi-dev libkrb5-dev libexif-dev libflac-dev libudev-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev libopus-dev libwebp-dev libxtst-dev libjpeg-dev libxml2-dev libgtk-3-dev libxslt1-dev liblcms2-dev libpulse-dev libpam0g-dev libdouble-conversion-dev libxnvctrl-dev libwoff-dev libsnappy-dev libglib2.0-dev libasound2-dev libjsoncpp-dev libsecret-1-dev libspeechd-dev libminizip-dev libhunspell-dev libxcb-dri3-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libopenjp2-7-dev libmodpbase64-dev libnss3-dev libnspr4-dev libcups2-dev libevent-dev libevdev-dev libgcrypt20-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho
dpkg-buildpackage: warning: build dependencies/conflicts unsatisfied; aborting
dpkg-buildpackage: warning: (Use -d flag to override.)

After installing all of those dependencies I get:

dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source package ungoogled-chromium
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source version 123.0.6312.105-1~deb13u1xtradeb1.2404.1
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source distribution noble
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source changed by XtraDeb User <xtradeb.user@example.com>
dpkg-buildpackage: info: host architecture amd64
 dpkg-source --before-build .
 debian/rules clean
dh clean
   debian/rules override_dh_auto_clean
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/iwplayer/ungoogled-chromium-debian/convert3/after-step-7'
test ! -f ungoogled-domain-substitution.orig.tar \
|| tar xf ungoogled-domain-substitution.orig.tar
rm -f     ungoogled-domain-substitution.orig.tar
rm -rf third_party/node/linux/node-linux-x64
rm -rf out
rm -rf third_party/node/node_modules/rollup

rm -rf third_party/node/node_modules/acorn
rm -rf third_party/node/node_modules/walk
find . -name \*.pyc -execdir rm -f {} \;
dh_auto_clean
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/iwplayer/ungoogled-chromium-debian/convert3/after-step-7'
   dh_clean
        rm -f debian/debhelper-build-stamp
        rm -rf debian/.debhelper/
        rm -f -- debian/ungoogled-chromium.substvars debian/ungoogled-chromium-l10n.substvars debian/ungoogled-chromium-shell.substvars debian/ungoogled-chromium-driver.substvars debian/ungoogled-chromium-common.substvars debian/ungoogled-chromium-sandbox.substvars debian/files
        rm -fr -- debian/ungoogled-chromium/ debian/tmp/ debian/ungoogled-chromium-l10n/ debian/ungoogled-chromium-shell/ debian/ungoogled-chromium-driver/ debian/ungoogled-chromium-common/ debian/ungoogled-chromium-sandbox/
        find .  \( \( \
                \( -path .\*/.git -o -path .\*/.svn -o -path .\*/.bzr -o -path .\*/.hg -o -path .\*/CVS -o -path .\*/.pc -o -path .\*/_darcs \) -prune -o -type f -a \
                \( -name '#*#' -o -name '.*~' -o -name '*~' -o -name DEADJOE \
                 -o -name '*.orig' -o -name '*.rej' -o -name '*.bak' \
                 -o -name '.*.orig' -o -name .*.rej -o -name '.SUMS' \
                 -o -name TAGS -o \( -path '*/.deps/*' -a -name '*.P' \) \
                \) -exec rm -f {} + \) -o \
                \( -type d -a \( -name autom4te.cache -o -name __pycache__ \) -prune -exec rm -rf {} + \) \)
 debian/rules binary
dh binary
   dh_update_autotools_config
   dh_autoreconf
   debian/rules override_dh_auto_configure
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/iwplayer/ungoogled-chromium-debian/convert3/after-step-7'
uname -m
x86_64
if [ `uname -m` = "armv7l" ]; then \
        grep -q 'neon\|asimd' /proc/cpuinfo || { \
                echo "No NEON extension detected on armhf, refusing to build" 1>&2; \
                false; \
        }; \
fi
\# verify that we're not accidentally uploading to stable-security without CVEs
\# use system node w/out patching source; upstream hardcodes x64 in path
mkdir -p third_party/node/linux/node-linux-x64/bin
cp /usr/bin/node third_party/node/linux/node-linux-x64/bin
\# use system rollup
cp -ra /usr/share/nodejs/rollup third_party/node/node_modules/
\# output compiler information
clang++-16 --version
Ubuntu clang version 16.0.6 (23ubuntu4)
Target: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /usr/bin
\# prefer unbundled (system) libraries
./debian/scripts/unbundle
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/iwplayer/ungoogled-chromium-debian/convert3/after-step-7/./debian/scripts/unbundle", line 9, in <module>
    import replace_gn_files
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'replace_gn_files'
make[1]: *** [debian/rules:161: override_dh_auto_configure] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/iwplayer/ungoogled-chromium-debian/convert3/after-step-7'
make: *** [debian/rules:137: binary] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2

I do see the python script:

• chromium-123.0.6312.105/build/linux/unbundle/replace_gn_files.py

[iskunk]

I tried your instructions today from scratch and ran into a compilation issue in step 7:

Make sure that your ORIG_SOURCE variable is pointing to an unpacked source tree of (Debian) Chromium of the specified version. The variable appears to be unset in your run.

I went back to using version 123.0.6312.105-1

The latest (.201) should work. As usual, the previous version has significant security vulnerabilities...

I had unmet dependencies:

You always have to install a source package's build dependencies before building the package.

After installing all of those dependencies I get:

I... have never seen the build fail that way before :-] I don't know what would have caused that to happen.

It's not clear to me exactly what operations have been made on the source tree that you are attempting to build, but I think you may want to try building regular old google-ful Chromium first. (Run the xtradeb-convert step, and skip the ungoogled ones.) That will take quite a bit of variability out of the process, and confirm that you can build Chromium before going for the variant.

[rpstew]

I started again from scratch. I got past step 7 this time with version 124.0.6367.118. I'm at the step now to run:

• /path/to/xtradeb-convert/pkg/chromium.sh /path/to/chromium-source/debian noble

I see several debian directories in my convert directory:

• chromium-124.0.6367.118/debian
• debian
• ungoogled-chromium-src/debian

Which one should I use when running chromium.sh?

[iskunk]

This is a question of workflow. I can't tell you exactly what to do, because it depends on what you want to do, but I'll clarify what you have there:

• chromium-124.0.6367.118/debian: This is the original, probably unmodified Debian source tree. If you just wanted to build regular Chromium on Ubuntu, you'd convert this one.

• debian: Not sure where this came from. Because it is not inside a Chromium source tree, however, it is probably not useful.

• ungoogled-chromium-src/debian: Note that ungoogled-chromium-src is a work tree for the conversion process. You could modify this tree, but the tree has already been packed into a source package (the trio of .dsc, .debian.tar.xz, and .orig.tar.xz). Either modify the tree and get rid of the source package, or unpack the source package separately and run the conversion on that tree (and get rid of the work tree). The latter is the expected process, but the former will save you quite a bit of disk churn.

You might prefer passing the INPLACE=1 argument to convert/Makefile, so that it will convert your starting source tree instead of making a copy and modifying that. (If you are going to run through this process regularly, as with each successive Chromium update, then you'll assuredly want to do this.)

[rpstew]

I will use INPLACE=1 as we do intend to modify the source code. So the first two times I ran the chromium.sh script I ran it on the first two debian directories in your previous message which I assume was incorrect. So do I run it on the ungoogled-chromium-src/debian directory assuming INPLACE is set to 1?

[iskunk]

If you use INPLACE=1, then no ungoogled-chromium-src tree is created, because all the modifications are made to the original source tree (presumably the unpacked Debian sources that you started with).

[rpstew]

So after step 7 I am left with the three files mentioned in step 8 although one of them is symbolic link:

• lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 May 13 17:12 ungoogled-chromium_124.0.6367.118.orig.tar.xz -> chromium_124.0.6367.118.orig.tar.xz
• -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 662004 May 13 17:14 ungoogled-chromium_124.0.6367.118-1.debian.tar.xz
• -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2995 May 13 17:14 ungoogled-chromium_124.0.6367.118-1.dsc

I'm assuming I need to unpack the debian.tar.xz file. Do I also need to unpack the orig.tar.xz file? Do I need to run xtradeb-convert/pkg/chromium.sh on one of the unpacked tar files?

[iskunk]

If you are working with a single tree, then you don't need to create that source package. You can skip its creation by invoking the convert target in the makefile instead of the default/implicit all.

Once the conversion is done, you can run chromium.sh on the converted source tree.