TL;DR: running the Chrome devtools front-end from the standalone repo doesn't work anymore. Is this a bug?
I attempted to do some devtools front-end hacking (without compiling all of Chromium) based on these instructions on how to work on the devtools:
I started by checking out the devtools repo from here (revision 536c06b4):
The inspector did not appear. I looked at the console and noted that there were several 404 errors: "/front_end/InspectorBackendCommands.js", "/inspector.json", and "/front_end/SupportedCSSProperties.js".
I then did a full Chromium checkout (revision 400593) using "fetch --nohooks --no-history chromium" and encountered the same result.
I ran "git bisect" against the devtools repo and found that commit b9ff6c43 appears to have broken the existing directions (the previous commit lets the devtools load successfully).
For completeness, I did a full Chromium build with "debug_devtools=1" and it works as expected.
Is there going to be a new way to work on the devtools without doing the full Chromium compile (or is this behavior a bug)? Now that I'm set up with the Chromium build (which took six hours :P) it's not a big deal, but it would be nice to have the option.
Thanks!
Hans