Using the proprietary PDF plugin in open-source Chromium

[Wei Hu]

I'm building my own version of Chromium on Arch Linux because I've
made my own patches. On the other hand, I like Chrome's built-in PDF
plugin which isn't available in Chromium. So far I've been able to
copy libpdf.so from Chrome-dev and dump it in Chromium's directory,
and most of the time it would just work.

However, every once in a while when I update Chromium, the PDF plugin
fails to load, giving a "Missing Plug-in" error. Usually when I wait
until the next version of Chrome-dev comes out, everything's fine
again. My question is, why do the PDF plugin and Chromium needs to
synchronize? How can I change the code to make Chromium more "backward
compatible"? A few pointers to get me started are appreciated.

[Darin Fisher]

This is probably caused by API drift.  The interfaces between the PDF plugin and Chromium are evolving.  We expect them to mostly stabilize in the future.  No specific ETA on that though.

-Darin

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[Elliot Glaysher (Chromium)]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Wei Hu <wei...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My question is, why do the PDF plugin and Chromium needs to
> synchronize?

Because PPAPI is still evolving (http://code.google.com/p/ppapi/),
isn't feature complete, and is being "filed tested" by the PDF plugin
before we commit to the interface.

> How can I change the code to make Chromium more "backward
> compatible"?

You can't. Binary incompatible changes will be continue to be made for
the foreseeable future.

-- Elliot

[PhistucK]

You will have to track the PPAPI\PDF plugin changes in chromium-checkins.

☆PhistucK