This Chromium portable works fine on Windows XP while every other tried builds don't

[Grigory Mozhaev]

Greetings!

First of all, thank you for your work!

Since 46.x version Chromium stopped working on Windows XP at all, it just hangs. However Chromium Portable works fine.

Searcing web found example of the problem:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=521294

or here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/3hy025/help_chromium_does_not_load_any_page_on_windows

I tried a lot of chromium builds and even did my own - nothing helped and nothing work in Windows XP, except yours build. Chromium Portable works like a charm! But how?
I checked patches on sourceforge, however they doesn't explain of how Chromium Portable been built, i.e. changes to .gyp files and environment variables, building process, etc.

There is no workaround or solution in the internet for this issue has been found (and Chromium devs does not care about, since they won't support XP anymore),
please share other patches you made so everyone who want to proceed use XP will be able to build (non portable) Chromium under it. Thanks!

Regards,
Grigory

[Aluísio Augusto Silva Gonçalves]

I don't think I'm doing anything special to keep Windows XP support.

In any case, I'm using VS2013 (Update 5, I believe) with the SDKs for Windows 8 and 10 installed to their default locations.  Build commands are:

git fetch --tags; git co <tag>; gclient sync --with_branch_heads -j2 

<apply patches and rebranding> 

python build\gyp_chromium [-Dtarget_arch=x64]
ninja -C out\Release[_x64] chrome chrome.7z

~/.gyp/include.gypi is:

{
  "variables": {
    "branding"                       : "Chromium",
    "buildtype"                      : "Release",
    "component"                      : "static_library",
    "fastbuild"                      : 2,
    "tracing_like_official_build"    : 1,
    "enable_google_now"              : 0,
    "v8_use_external_startup_data"   : 0,
  },
  "target_defaults": {
    "defines": ["OFFICIAL_BUILD"],
    "msvs_settings": {
      "VCCLCompilerTool": {
        "Optimization"                  : 2,
        "FavorSizeOrSpeed"              : 2,
        "InlineFunctionExpansion"       : 2,
        "EnableIntrinsicFunctions"      : "false",
        "EnableFiberSafeOptimizations"  : "true",
        "StringPooling"                 : "true",
        "OmitFramePointers"             : "true"
      },
      "VCLibrarianTool": {
        "AdditionalOptions"  : ["/expectedoutputsize:209715200"]
      },
      "VCLinkerTool": {
        "EnableCOMDATFolding"   : 2,
        "LinkIncremental"       : 1,
        "OptimizeForWindows98"  : 1,
        "OptimizeReferences"    : 2,
        "AdditionalOptions"     : ["/expectedoutputsize:41943040"]
      }
    }
  }
}

[Grigory Mozhaev]

Sorry what it took too long to reply you back, but I've found a solution and was too busy before to get back to this thread and read your answer, but I very-very appreciate your reply and it confirms that I've found and 100% sure.

> I don't think I'm doing anything special to keep Windows XP support.

Actually you do. It, surprisingly, depends on a buildtype if it's default 'Dev' then Chromium won't work on XP if it's 'Official' (like you did) it will.

[Aluísio Augusto Silva Gonçalves]

Thanks for the reply.

I've switched to the new GN build system for the latest release (2633.3) and I'm not sure it still works on XP.  Would you mind testing it?

I'm still figuring out how to make it work like an official build without turning on whole-program optimization.

[marc]

Tested latest Chromium Portable 50.0.2633.3 on Windows XP sp3 and it
does not run anymore (same as Google Chrome v. 50.0.x.x).

[m...@mihau.de]

confirmed; it now reports an error about a missing component before the gui even starts.

[Aluísio Augusto Silva Gonçalves]

Can y'all test the build at https://1drv.ms/1SKLyJK?  It extracts into a Chrome-bin directory.

It has is_official_build set, but the whole-program optimization flags disabled (so I can link it with only 4 GB of RAM).

[marc]

Tested this build on a VirtualBox Windows XP sp3 system and it does not run.

Placing files on an existent Chromium Portable, and running via ChromiumPortable.exe, it does not start.

Running directly chrome.exe shows this error window:
http://i.imgur.com/QubTN8g.png

[Aluísio Augusto Silva Gonçalves]

This particular error seems due to https://crrev.com/b39972df6e73b63050a982db7723b664c2afb729; QueryWorkingSetEx was introduced in Windows XP x64.

With new code targeting Win7+ and https://crbug.com/579196 explicitly going for removal of XP-only code, keeping compatibility is going to be an uphill battle.  If anyone wants to contribute patches, I'll gladly accept them, but I don't think I'm going to make them myself.