1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
|
# Ninja Build
Ninja is a build system written with the specific goal of improving the
edit-compile cycle time. It is used by default everywhere except when building
for iOS.
Ninja behaves very similar to Make -- the major feature is that it starts
building files nearly instantly. (It has a number of minor user interface
improvements to make as well.)
Read more about Ninja at [the Ninja home page](https://ninja-build.org/).
## Using it
### Configure your system to use Ninja
#### Install
Ninja is included in `depot_tools` as well as `gyp`, so there's nothing to
install.
## Build instructions
To build Chrome:
cd /path/to/chrome/src
ninja -C out/Debug chrome
Specify `out/Release` for a release build. I recommend setting up an alias so
that you don't need to type out that build directory path.
If you want to build all targets, use `ninja -C out/Debug all`. It's faster to
build only the target you're working on, like `chrome` or `unit_tests`.
## Android
Identical to Linux, just make sure `OS=android` is in your `GYP_DEFINES`. You
want to build one of the apk targets, e.g. `content_shell_apk`.
## Windows
Similar to Linux. It uses MSVS's `cl.exe`, `link.exe`, etc. so you still need to
have VS installed. To use it, open `cmd.exe`, go to your chrome checkout, and
run:
set GYP_DEFINES=component=shared_library
python build\gyp_chromium
ninja -C out\Debug chrome.exe
`component=shared_library` is optional but recommended for faster links.
You can also set `GYP_GENERATORS=ninja,msvs-ninja` to get both VS projects
generated if you want to use VS just to browse/edit (but then gyp takes twice as
long to run).
If you're using Express or the Windows SDK by itself (rather than using a Visual
Studio install), you'll need to run from a vcvarsall command prompt.
### Debugging
Miss VS for debugging?
```
devenv.com /debugexe chrome.exe --my-great-args "go here" --single-process etc
```
Miss Xcode for debugging? Read
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/debugging-on-os-x/building-with-ninja-debugging-with-xcode
### Without Visual Studio
That is, building with just the WinDDK. This is documented in the
[regular build instructions](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions-windows#TOC-Setting-up-the-environment-for-building-with-Visual-C-2010-Express-or-Windows-7.1-SDK).
## Tweaks
### Building through errors
Pass a flag like `-k3` to make Ninja build until it hits three errors instead of
stopping at the first.
### Parallelism
Pass a flag like `-j8` to use 8 parallel processes, or `-j1` to compile just one
at a time (helpful if you're getting weird compiler errors). By default Ninja
tries to use all your processors.
### More options
There are more options. Run `ninja --help` to see them all.
### Custom build configs
You can write a specific build config to a specific output directory via the
`-G` flags to gyp. Here's an example from jamesr:
`build/gyp_chromium -Gconfig=Release -Goutput_dir=out_profiling -Dprofiling=1
-Dlinux_fpic=0`
## Bugs
If you encounter any problems, please file a bug at http://crbug.com/new with
label `ninja` and cc `thakis@` or `scottmg@`. Assume that it is a bug in Ninja
before you bother anyone about e.g. link problems.
|
