Web Inspector Developer Survival Guide

Let's say, we don't like red color for CSS property names. We want to change it to purple.

Inspect The Inspector

Run Safari or ​WebKit Nightly build. Open Web Inspector.

We can edit inspectorSyntaxHightlinght.css in our favorite code editor, but we cannot make a patch from it. After next update inspectorSyntaxHighlight.css will be overwritten and our changes disappeared.

Create / Update a Bug Report

• ​Existing Web Inspector Bugs [Can we make a nice ​http://webkit.org/inspector-bugs link?]
• ​Create New Web Inspector Bug

It will benefit both you and the usual Web Inspector developers if you create or comment on a bug report for the feature or fix you intend to work on. A "Bug" report is for all code changes, this include fixes, issues, and ideas for new features.

This step is very important, because your update will automatically notify the regular Web Inspector developers. This will allow them to immediately provide you with some feedback, and pointers / guidance for solving the issue or adding the feature!

Now Do Your Hacking

1. ​Using Git with WebKit

   git clone git://git.webkit.org/WebKit.git
   cd WebKit
   git branch purple_css_values
   git checkout purple_css_values
   

2. ​Build WebKit

   Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --debug
   

   [Do we really need --debug flag here?]

First build takes ≈40 minutes.

3. ​Run it

   Tools/Scripts/run-safari --debug
   

4. Edit WebCore/inspector/front-end/inspectorSyntaxHighlight.css within a git repository.

5. There are two options:
   1. Copy files from WebCore/inspector/front-end/ to the build by running Tools/Scripts/build-webkit --debug --inspector-frontend. Do it after every time you modify Inspector's files.
   2. Make a symlink

      rm -rf WebKitBuild/Debug/WebCore.framework/Resources/inspector
      ln -s WebCore/inspector/front-end/ WebKitBuild/Debug/WebCore.framework/Resources/inspector
      

6. Edit inspectorSyntaxHighlight.css.

A tip: You can reload Web Inspector just like regular web page (Cmd+R on Mac, Ctrl+R on Windows and Linux).

7. Commit

   git status WebCore/inspector/front-end/
   git diff WebCore/inspector/front-end/
   git commit WebCore/inspector/front-end/
   

8. ​ChangeLogs

   Tools/Scripts/prepare-ChangeLog --help
   Tools/Scripts/prepare-ChangeLog --bug xxxxx --git-commit HEAD -o
   # edit WebCore/ChangeLog
   git commit WebCore/ChangeLog
   

Instead of xxxxx you should put bug number, like ​32926.

9. Make a patch

   git diff master..HEAD > purple_css_values.patch
   

10. ​Submit a patch and wait for a review!

If you have any questions there are always people willing to help. Just jump onto IRC and visit #webkit or #webkit-inspector.

---

Parts of the tutorial was taken from ​Quick Hacking on the Web Inspector.