14 DAY TRIAL // Google has decided to finally upload its Chrome code for iOS devices into the Chromium repository, a place where Google usually uploads its open source tools.
This has been a move that’s been a long-time coming. The open-source code can now be checked out by anyone. On top of this, it can be modified and compiled.
“Historically, the code for Chrome for iOS was kept separate from the rest of the Chromium project due to the additional complexity required for the platform. After years of careful refactoring, all of this code is rejoining Chromium and being moved into the open-source repository,” writes Google’s Rohit Rao in a blog post.
As you may know, due to constraints of the iOS platform, all browsers must be built on top of the WebKit rendering engine. In Chromium’s case, that means it has to support both WebKit and Blink, which is Chrome’s rendering engine for other platforms. Google states that due to the additional complexities this integration required, they wanted to avoid putting it in the Chromium code base.
Android and iOS Chrome versions on Chromium
Rao writes that a lot of time has been spent over the past several years to make the needed changes to upstream the code for Chrome for iOS into Chromium, but this process has finally reached an end.
Chromium is the open source web browser project that shares quite a bit of its code with Google Chrome. New features are often added there first, tested and vetted before being moved into Chrome, into the browser version a lot of us use.
Developers have taken advantage of the open source code and have released several versions under the Chromium name, which ended up being a starting point for many browsers. Even Opera switched to Chromium base back in 2013, leaving its own structure behind.
Back in May 2015, Google uploaded the open source code of Chrome for Android, breaking tradition that Chromium was only dedicated to desktop computers and laptops. Now, with the iOS version uploaded too, the collection is pretty much complete.