How to download Skia

Install depot_tools and Git

Follow the instructions on Installing Chromium’s depot_tools to download depot_tools (which includes gclient, git-cl, and Ninja). Below is a summary of the necessary steps.

git clone 'https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git'
export PATH="${PWD}/depot_tools:${PATH}"

depot_tools will also install Git on your system, if it wasn’t installed already.

Install bazelisk

If you intend to add or remove files, or change #includes, you will need to use Bazel to regenerate parts of the BUILD.bazel files. Instead of installing Bazel manually, we recommend you install Bazelisk, which will fetch the appropriate version of Bazel for you (as specified by //.bazelversion).

Install ninja

Ninja can be supplied using gclient or with bin/fetch-ninja.

Clone the Skia repository

Skia can either be cloned using git or the fetch tool that is installed with depot_tools.

git clone https://skia.googlesource.com/skia.git
# or
# fetch skia
cd skia
python3 tools/git-sync-deps
python3 bin/fetch-ninja

Getting started with Skia

You will probably now want to build Skia.

Changing and contributing to Skia

At this point, you have everything you need to build and use Skia! If you want to make changes, and possibly contribute them back to the Skia project, read How To Submit a Patch.