Browsing the source code

If you just want to look at the source code, you can either browse it online or download it with git. Here's how to download the latest version of the source code:

git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/native_client/src/native_client

If you use git clone, the source code appears under a directory named native_client in the current directory. You can update it using git pull.

Getting buildable source code

If you want to build the latest version of Native Client, follow these steps:

1. If you don't already have gclient, get it by downloading the Chromium depot tools.

2. If you don't already have git, download it.

3. Create a directory to hold the Native Client source code. We'll call it $NACL_ROOT.

4. Important: Make sure the path to the directory has no spaces. Examples of good $NACL_ROOT values:

   • /home/me/nativeclient (Linux)
   • /Users/me/nativeclient (Mac)
   • C:\nativeclient (Windows)

5. In a shell window, execute the following commands:

    cd $NACL_ROOT
    gclient config https://chromium.googlesource.com/native_client/src/native_client
    cd $NACL_ROOT
    gclient sync
   

Here's what the gclient steps do:

1. gclient config sets up your working directory, creating a .gclient file that identifies the structure to pull from the repository.
2. gclient sync creates several subdirectories and downloads the latest Native Client files.

To update the Native Client source code, run gclient sync from $NACL_ROOT or any of its subdirectories. Once you've downloaded the source code, you can build Native Client. To do so, you need Python and a platform-specific development environment. Details on prerequisites and how to build are in Building Native Client.