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beyond what i ever thought possible as to have chromium compiled for the blackberry 10 OS
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BerryBrowser dbca4f5641 README: Berry Browser V3 download, device compatibility, and branch guide. 
Adds releases/BerryBrowserV3-3.0.2-build84.bar (installable app), documents
what works in the current app vs the original headless port, and points
users at the berry-v3 branch for full source.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-09-06 21:34:04 +00:00
build Fix build: add berry_browser_chrome to BUILD.gn, fix switch name 2026-02-21 07:22:54 +00:00
deploy QNX/BB10: Multi-process GPU bring-up, BerryShell launcher, and MP helpers. 2026-06-21 14:27:32 +00:00
docs Update deploy hardening tier scripts and document complex page success 2026-06-14 06:15:01 +00:00
patches QNX/BB10: Multi-process GPU bring-up, BerryShell launcher, and MP helpers. 2026-06-21 14:27:32 +00:00
qnx_test_captures HTTPS working: TLS 1.3 via BoringSSL on BlackBerry Passport 2026-03-14 05:57:21 +00:00
releases README: Berry Browser V3 download, device compatibility, and branch guide. 2026-09-06 21:34:04 +00:00
scripts QNX/BB10: Multi-process GPU bring-up, BerryShell launcher, and MP helpers. 2026-06-21 14:27:32 +00:00
src QNX/BB10: Multi-process GPU bring-up, BerryShell launcher, and MP helpers. 2026-06-21 14:27:32 +00:00
.gitignore QNX/BB10: Multi-process GPU bring-up, BerryShell launcher, and MP helpers. 2026-06-21 14:27:32 +00:00
browser-content-shell-131.zip Add pre-built binary zip and quick start instructions 2026-03-14 06:26:23 +00:00
content-shell-term49.zip Add hard-deadline watchdog so --timeout never hangs 2026-06-11 23:43:22 +00:00
README.md README: Berry Browser V3 download, device compatibility, and branch guide. 2026-09-06 21:34:04 +00:00

README.md

Chromium for BlackBerry 10 (QNX ARM32)

A port of Chromium's content_shell to QNX / BlackBerry 10 — now shipping as Berry Browser, a full windowed browser app for BB10 phones. This brings a modern (~2024-era) Chromium engine to a platform that only ever shipped with an ancient WebKit fork.

What started as a headless --dump-dom experiment (still documented below) is today an installable .bar with GPU rendering, a Skia-drawn toolbar, HTTPS with a bundled root store, working YouTube playback, WhatsApp Web, ad/tracker blocking, and an Ubuntu-styled home screen.

Download — Berry Browser (V3)

Latest: v3.0.2 build 84 — releases/BerryBrowserV3-3.0.2-build84.bar (~60 MB)

Install like any BB10 sideload:

  1. Enable Development Mode on the phone (Settings > Security and Privacy).
  2. Sideload the .bar with Sachesi or DDPB from a computer — or copy it to the device and install with an on-device file manager that supports .bar.
  3. Launch Berry Browser from the home screen.

New in build 84: the app auto-detects the panel size at launch, so touch is correctly calibrated on every BB10 model — not just the Passport. Earlier builds needed Settings > Device on non-Passport phones.

What works in Berry Browser

  • Windowed GPU rendering (EGL + Skia), 45 fps default cap, resolution tiers
  • HTTPS everywhere via bundled root CA store (BoringSSL, TLS 1.3, QUIC)
  • YouTube: watch pages + search through a lightweight built-in player (progressive MP4 — no SABR/kevlar player)
  • WhatsApp Web, Facebook Messenger, DuckDuckGo / Bing / Google search
  • Ad & tracker blocking at the network layer
  • Pin sites to the BB10 home screen, BB10 Share integration, mailto:/tel:/sms: handoff to native apps
  • In-app Settings (resolution, frame rate, dark mode, device profile) and persistent disk cache

Device compatibility

Device Panel Status
Passport 1440×1440 Primary target — fully tested
Classic (Q20) / Q10 / Q5 720×720 Auto-detected since build 84 (fixes touch calibration)
Z10 768×1280 Auto-detected; less tested
Z30 / Z3 / Leap 720×1280 Auto-detected; less tested

Requires BB10 10.3.x. Manual device selection in Settings still overrides auto-detect; berry-device-rotation marker corrects orientation if needed.

Branches

Branch Contents
berry-v3 (active) Full Chromium source of the current Berry Browser app — all engine work, shims, launcher, packaging
qnx-bb10-v3 Kept in sync with berry-v3 (same commits)
qnx-bb10 Earlier V2 line (pre-Berry-Browser save point)
main This snapshot: docs, patches, and prebuilt binaries against the base commit

Recent berry-v3 milestones: YouTube watch/search shims (builds 43–49), stability/video/login fixes (50–72), Ubuntu-themed chrome + BB10 share + Android-first YouTube playback (82), modern start page (83), device panel auto-detect (84).

Target Hardware
Primary device BlackBerry Passport (SQW100-1)
SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 801
CPU Quad-core Krait 400, ARMv7-A
RAM 3 GB
OS BlackBerry 10 (QNX 8.0.0)

Base Chromium Commit

ad76543128c308a9afdfc1ecf5b3f714886446c1

All patches apply against this commit. Fetch Chromium source using depot_tools and check out this commit before applying. The berry-v3 branch already contains everything applied.

Original headless port (historical)

The sections below document the original bring-up: a headless content_shell that could --dump-dom over SSH. Still useful for understanding the port's foundations and for building from source.

What Worked (headless era)

  • Headless browser running in single-process mode on the BlackBerry Passport
  • HTML parsing and DOM construction via Blink
  • V8 JavaScript engine initialized and running on ARM32 QNX
  • --dump-dom output for about:blank, data:, local HTTP, external HTTP, and HTTPS with clean exit
  • Complex HTTPS pages -- https://www.google.com and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX dump full DOM (~200KB+)
$ ./run.sh https://example.com 2>/dev/null
<html><head><title>Example Domain</title>...
<h1>Example Domain</h1>
<p>This domain is for use in documentation examples...</p>
...</html>

Everything listed as "in progress" back then — windowed Ozone rendering, the Skia toolbar, .bar packaging, root CAs, GPU — has since landed on berry-v3.

Repository Structure

├── README.md
├── releases/
│   └── BerryBrowserV3-3.0.2-build84.bar  # installable Berry Browser app (~60 MB)
├── browser-content-shell-131.zip  # pre-built headless binary package (72 MB)
├── patches/
│   └── qnx-port.patch          # unified diff (~21k lines)
├── src/                         # 42 new QNX-specific files
│   ├── base/qnx/               # platform abstractions (memory, process, files, threading)
│   ├── build/config/qnx/       # GN platform config (defines, sysroot, flags)
│   ├── build/toolchain/qnx/    # GN toolchain (Clang 17 compile + GCC 9.3 link)
│   ├── content/                 # shell platform delegate, stubs, browser chrome
│   ├── gpu/qnx/                # GPU stubs
│   ├── sandbox/qnx/            # sandbox stubs
│   ├── ui/ozone/platform/qnx_screen/  # Ozone platform backend for QNX Screen
│   └── ...
├── deploy/
│   ├── README.md                # usage instructions for the binary
│   ├── run.sh                   # convenience launcher script
│   ├── package.sh               # build a deployable tarball
│   └── www/index.html           # sample test page
├── qnx_test_captures/           # verified milestone outputs (stdout + stderr)
├── build/
│   ├── args.gn                  # GN build arguments
│   └── ld-wrapper.sh            # linker wrapper (LLD + QNX libs)
├── scripts/
│   ├── apply-patches.sh         # apply everything to a Chromium checkout
│   ├── build.sh                 # build content_shell
│   └── run-on-passport.sh       # deploy + run on device
└── docs/
    ├── STATUS.md                # detailed status and issue log
    ├── QNX_BB10_MILESTONES.md   # milestone descriptions and test captures
    └── TERM49-DEPLOY.md         # quick deploy guide for Term49 userland

Quick Start (Pre-built Binary)

A ready-to-run zip is included in this repo: browser-content-shell-131.zip (~72 MB)

Install on BB10 device

# Copy zip to device (from host)
scp browser-content-shell-131.zip passport:/accounts/1000/shared/misc/

# On device (e.g. via Term49 shell)
cp /accounts/1000/shared/misc/browser-content-shell-131.zip .
unzip -o browser-content-shell-131.zip
chmod +x bin/content-shell bin/content_shell

Run

bin/content-shell https://example.com 2>/dev/null
bin/content-shell http://example.com 2>/dev/null
bin/content-shell 'data:text/html,<h1>Hello</h1>' 2>/dev/null

Output is the rendered DOM on stdout. Use 2>/dev/null to suppress stderr noise.

Add --qnx-trace to enable verbose debug traces (off by default):

bin/content-shell --qnx-trace https://example.com

See docs/TERM49-DEPLOY.md for full Term49 deployment details.

Building from Source

Prerequisites

  • Linux host (tested on Ubuntu in Docker)
  • Chromium source checked out at commit ad76543128 via depot_tools
  • QNX SDP 8.0 (or compatible) with ARM cross-compilation toolchain at /root/qnx800/
  • Clang 17 (/usr/bin/clang-17, /usr/bin/clang++-17)
  • LLD 17 (/usr/bin/ld.lld-17)
  • patchelf for patching the ELF interpreter
  • SSH access to a BlackBerry 10 device with developer mode enabled

Build Instructions

1. Fetch Chromium and check out the base commit

mkdir ~/chromium && cd ~/chromium
fetch --nohooks chromium
cd src
git checkout ad76543128c308a9afdfc1ecf5b3f714886446c1
gclient sync -D

2. Apply the QNX port

cd /path/to/chromium-for-bb10
./scripts/apply-patches.sh ~/chromium/src

This applies patches/qnx-port.patch and copies the 42 new files into place.

3. Configure the build

cd ~/chromium/src
mkdir -p out/qnx-arm
cp /path/to/chromium-for-bb10/build/args.gn out/qnx-arm/args.gn
gn gen out/qnx-arm

4. Set up the linker wrapper

The QNX GCC toolchain's ld must be replaced with the LLD wrapper:

cp /path/to/chromium-for-bb10/build/ld-wrapper.sh \
   /root/qnx800/arm-blackberry-qnx8eabi/bin/ld
chmod +x /root/qnx800/arm-blackberry-qnx8eabi/bin/ld

5. Build

ninja -C out/qnx-arm content_shell

6. Deploy to device

# Patch the ELF interpreter for the device
patchelf --set-interpreter /accounts/devuser/berry-deploy/ldqnx.so.2 \
    out/qnx-arm/content_shell

# Copy binary + resources to device
scp out/qnx-arm/content_shell out/qnx-arm/content_shell.pak \
    out/qnx-arm/icudtl.dat out/qnx-arm/snapshot_blob.bin \
    out/qnx-arm/shell_resources.pak out/qnx-arm/ui_resources_100_percent.pak \
    passport:/accounts/devuser/berry-deploy/

# Also deploy QNX runtime libraries (ldqnx.so.2, libm.so.2, libgcc_s.so.1, libstdc++.so.6)

7. Package for deployment

# Build a self-contained tarball with the binary, runtime libs, and resources
./deploy/package.sh
# Creates deploy/bb10-content-shell.tar.gz (~60 MB)

8. Deploy and run

# Copy to device
scp -r deploy/bb10-content-shell/ passport:/accounts/devuser/bb10-content-shell/

# Run on device
ssh passport "cd /accounts/devuser/bb10-content-shell && ./run.sh http://example.com" 2>/dev/null

# Or with a data: URL
ssh passport "cd /accounts/devuser/bb10-content-shell && \
    ./run.sh 'data:text/html,<h1>Hello from BlackBerry</h1>'" 2>/dev/null

# Local HTTP (start python server first: python3.2 -m http.server 8001)
ssh passport "cd /accounts/devuser/bb10-content-shell && \
    ./run.sh http://127.0.0.1:8001/" 2>/dev/null

See deploy/README.md for detailed usage instructions.

Build Configuration

target_os = "qnx"
target_cpu = "arm"
is_debug = false
is_component_build = false
use_sysroot = false
treat_warnings_as_errors = false
clang_base_path = "/usr/lib/llvm-17"
clang_use_chrome_plugins = false
use_lld = false
enable_nacl = false
use_custom_libcxx = false
is_clang = true
use_glib = false
use_dbus = false
enable_rust = false
use_v8_context_snapshot = false
symbol_level = 1

Toolchain

Component Tool Path
C compiler Clang 17 /usr/bin/clang-17
C++ compiler Clang 17 /usr/bin/clang++-17
Linker LLD 17 (via wrapper) /usr/bin/ld.lld-17
Archiver GCC 9.3 $QNX_HOST/bin/arm-blackberry-qnx8eabi-ar
Sysroot QNX SDP 8.0 /root/qnx800/arm-blackberry-qnx8eabi/

Architecture Notes

The port works around several QNX-specific issues:

  • QNX ARM std::string bugs: find_first_of, find_first_not_of, and find(char, pos) all return incorrect values (typically 0) on QNX ARM. Centralized safe replacements in base/qnx_string_util.h used across HTTP parsing, MIME type detection, chunked transfer decoding, and Mojo IPC deserialization.

  • Mojo IPC HttpResponseHeaders deserialization: The HttpResponseHeaders::Builder API hangs on QNX due to the std::string::find bug. Bypassed by directly constructing from raw header strings.

  • URL path parsing bug: QNX ARM codegen silently drops URL path components in ParsePath(). Bypassed with direct path assignment in DoParseAfterScheme().

  • DOCTYPE crash: Lowercase <!doctype html> causes SIGSEGV in strlen during HTML tokenization on QNX ARM. Fixed by normalizing to uppercase <!DOCTYPE in HTMLDocumentParser::Append().

  • Clipboard hang: ui::Clipboard::IsSupportedClipboardBuffer() hangs on QNX Ozone. Guarded with #if !BUILDFLAG(IS_QNX).

  • TRACE_EVENT hangs: Perfetto tracing macros cause hangs on QNX. All critical paths guarded with #if !BUILDFLAG(IS_QNX).

  • Debug traces: ~350+ write(2,...) debug traces consolidated behind QNX_TRACE_MSG/QNX_TRACE_FMT macros controlled by --qnx-trace runtime flag (off by default, zero overhead).

  • libevent poll() broken: poll() blocks indefinitely for external TCP sockets on QNX. Disabled poll backend, forced select() with 50ms timeout for zero-timeout bug and 200ms cap for idle.

  • Socket readiness detection: QNX select() with zero timeout doesn't detect TCP socket readiness. Thread-pool-offloaded select() with retry mechanism (6x2s) used as workaround.

  • Mojo EnableBatchDispatch: Disabled on QNX to prevent message delivery delays in ThrottlingURLLoader.

  • Content encoding: Forced Accept-Encoding: identity on QNX to avoid gzip/deflate decompression issues.

  • Single-process only: Due to QNX process model differences, only --single-process mode is supported.

  • Platform stubs: Missing QNX APIs (sandboxing, GPU, UI platform delegate, etc.) are stubbed out.

See docs/STATUS.md for a detailed issue log.

SSH Configuration

To connect to a BlackBerry Passport via USB:

Host passport
    HostName 169.254.0.1
    User devuser
    HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
    PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa

License

The Chromium source code is licensed under the BSD license and other applicable licenses. See the Chromium LICENSE for details.