Before proceeding with any combination of the steps below, make sure you have in your PATH:

CMake version 3.22 or higher
- run cmake --version to check
- If your system's preferred way to install software has only an older version, consider these instructions
Python 3.6+ and its pip
git

Then decide which of these approaches are appropriate for you:

ipfs_client (without Chromium)

Found in the library/ directory, ipfs_client is a library with a fairly standard CMake build.

As for dependencies, you have some choices:

With Python

If you have python3 (and and pip) installed and findable, it will use Conan to manage dependencies.

With C++23 (standard library in particular, but assuming the compiler too)

Be sure to set CXX_VERSION=23 in the CMake configure step. This covers your need for 'vocabulary types', so you shouldn't need Boost or Abseil. Otherwise, follow the next subsection.

With system-installed or otherwise CMake-findable dependencies

Required dependencies as they exist today:

protobuf (both compiler and library)
OpenSSL
vocabulary types: one of the following
- boost (See also: docker/debian-boost)
- abseil & boost (will prefer Abseil, fills in gap with boost)

To enable testing, these are also required:

GTest
GMock

Steps

mkdir -p /your/build/dir
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -S /path/to/ipfs-chromium -B /your/build/dir
- Set CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to one of Debug or Release.
- Specifying the generator (with -G) is optional, but I recommend picking one that knows about compile_commands.json. You do, obviously, need to pick one that you have installed. See the end of the output from cmake --help to see which ones you have available
Expect warnings about how it doesn't have access to a Chromium source tree and so won't be building that.
cmake --build /your/build/dir --target ipfs_client
- Or invoke your underlying build system directly, with make or ninja, or what have you.

Chromium with the ipfs component

If you already have a "chrome" build available on your system you'd like to patch with IPFS

Pre-steps

See the docs explaining these steps.
You already did the fetch & runhooks
You already have a build directory (e.g. out/Default) via gn gen
You have a handful of targets already built (TODO: get a specific list).
- These are all dependencies of chrome, so if you've built chrome you're good.

Steps (TODO - finish docker)

mkdir -p /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -D CHROMIUM_SOURCE_TREE=/your/checkout/chromium/src -D CHROMIUM_PROFILE=Default -S /path/to/ipfs-chromium -B /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir
- CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE - Either Debug or Release. Choose Debug unless you use is_debug=false in args.gn.
- CHROMIUM_SOURCE_TREE - points to the git checkout of chromium. Should end in /src
- CHROMIUM_PROFILE - the profile you're building. Defaults to ${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE}. ${CHROMIUM_SOURCE_TREE}/out/${CHROMIUM_PROFILE} should exist.
- DEPOT_TOOLS_DIRECTORY - Path to scripts like gn, autoninja, and ninja.py. If these are executable and in your PATH environment variable, you can leave this as its default value which is "DETECT_FROM_PATH" and does what one might expect.
- If ipfs is not mentioned in //chrome/browser/BUILD.gn , this command will apply the patch file presumably adding //components/ipfs as a dependency to //chrome/browser
cmake --build /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir --target build_browser

If you want ipfs-chromium's build do all your setup for you.

If you take this approach, ipfs-chromium will download a private copy of the Chromium source tree and depot_tools into its own build directory.

NOTE This takes a long time, about 55GB of disk space, and a fair bit of memory.

NOTE The previous section assumes you must have gotten all the dependencies of Chromium, because if you had not you wouldn't have successfully built chrome. However, here we cannot make that assumption. So...

Steps

mkdir -p /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -D DOWNLOAD_CHROMIUM=TRUE -S /path/to/ipfs-chromium -B /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir
- CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE - Either Debug or Release. If you choose Release it will set is_debug=false in args.gn.
- If ccache is in your path, it will instruct not just the CMake but also the gn build to use it. I recommend this.
- This step will take much longer than you may be used to as a normal CMake user.
Make sure you have Chromium's dependencies
- Linux
  - The script install-build-deps.sh mentioned in those instructions will be downloaded for you if you build the target setup_component e.g. cmake --build /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir --target setup_component. Ignore failure at this point, then look for your script in: /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir/chromium/src/build/install-build-deps.sh
  - The author is writing this on Fedora, where the not-guaranteed note seems to work fine.
  - If your system isn't supported by install-build-deps.sh, and doesn't have a functioning 'note' on that document, I suggest looking at the package lists from the other distros' notes to get an idea of what is actually needed. -Mac
  - Make any necessary upgrades/installations to meet the "System Requirements" mentioned in the doc. -Windows
  - Make any upgrades/installations mentioned in the "Setting up Windows" section mentioned in the doc that you don't already have.
  - Note: building on Windows isn't fully tested. Our released Windows builds were cross-compiled.
cmake --build /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir --target build_browser
- This will take much, much longer than you're used to.
At this point you should be able to run the binary. If you used the above command it could be found at: /an/ipfs-chromium/build/dir/chromium/src/out/Debug/chrome
To put a bow on it, you could ninja package_browser.
- package_browser doesn't work properly on Windows.

NOTE - anwhere in this document you see cmake --build, feel free to replace that with a call to your chosen underlying build system. For example, cmake --build X Y could become make -C X Y