Open Libraries: What Chrome Is Made Of
When we introduced Google’s Chrome browser, we mentioned how it’s composed of four rather ambitious open source projects: Google Chrome (the browser itself), Google V8 (the JavaScript engine), Webkit (the HTML rendering engine) and Gears (the web developing enhancer).
But of course, there are more than just four open source projects contributing to Chrome’s success. Most of them come from outside Google, too. In fact, there are 25 open-source libraries and APIs responsible for the functions in Chrome. Programmer Peteris Krumins dug into the code and fills us in on how Google reused existing, freely available code libraries to build its browser. Among them:
- Google Breakout — serves as Chrome’s crash reporter. New with Chrome and open source
- Skia — included with the Chrome package as Google’s vector graphic engine.
- libpng handles .PNG graphic usage
- Security is handled with Network Security Services (NSS) and TLS Lite
- Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) enables standardized plug-in support for things like Flash
- SQLite — a lightweight, centralized, self-contained SQL database engine
- Data compression is handled with zlib and bzip2
You can dive into the code of any of these libraries, including the Chrome browser, by heading directly to its site or repository. If you do, you’ll notice Google actually made some changes to some of the source libraries. You’ll be able to tell by looking for a README.google included in the package which will tell you what contributions Google made.
Reusing existing code can be a good thing, especially for open source projects. For one thing, it standardizes how these functions work — at least with the projects who also use the code. Second, the more developers working with these libraries means these small projects get more developers working for these projects including the high-paid brainiacs at Google. More developers and possibly more innovation means these projects drive forward. In the end, it means these features grow more robust, cooler and just plain easier to use.
[via Peteris Krumins]
