Custom Installer for Chromium

Question

I would like to provide a Chrome installation (or maybe Chromium?) That comes with my extension preinstalled, installed in a separate folder and enabled by default --enable-experimental-extension-apis . It would also be great to customize the look and feel more appropriate for my brand.

Does anyone know if its google tos enabled? Is it possible? Has this been done before? Is there an easy way to do this without breaking the Chromium source code?

Answer 1

If you know enough C to change the code, mini_installer is a good place to start. This is something that people will download anyway, so setting up some of the code there to suit your needs would be best. Install it where you want, make changes before / after installation, etc.

Otherwise, you can write some kind of script that loads and runs the installer, and then changes the settings. For compatibility with your obvious target audience, a simple batch of script would be the best option.

Another option is Chromium Portable . You make any changes you like and download the zip file. All they need to do is download and unzip it. Most users can do this, but the pictures on the download page will not be affected. You can also write a small program or script to download the zip file, unzip it and run everything you need to run (or Chromium it self).

Answer 2

This is technically possible and permitted. Indeed, there are a number of Chromium forks, such as Iron and Comodo Dragon .

A good idea is another question. If you are not ready to maintain your plug on a long-term basis (and, in particular, regularly provide software updates to your users), this is probably not a good idea. You should probably instruct your users to install Google Chrome normally, and then give them a link to install your extension.

As for the experimental extension APIs, I would avoid them. In future versions of Chrome, they may be removed or changed. If you must use them, simply instruct the user on how to enable them.