Consider moving from gyp to gn

[jeisinger]

Chromium started to move from gyp to gn a while ago. Soon, the v8 build will be fully supported on gn. While there's no immediate plan to remove the gyp files right away, gyp itself will become unsupported the less people use it.

Consider planning for moving to gn: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/tools/gn/README.md

[MylesBorins]

/cc @nodejs/build @nodejs/node-gyp

[jbergstroem]

This has been brought up a few times amongst issues while looking for a gyp replacement. GN in its current state is very tied to the google repo meaning building a standalone is tedious. There's a few attempts you likely can find in gists. I've been doing some attempts at ripping dependencies out in place for libuv and lessening ties to the rest of the google checkout, but since gn is moving in such high pace I don't think this is the way forward.

Here's more info: #133
..and here: nodejs/NG#24

I'll close this -- feel free to continue talking in above (the ng issue).

[jbergstroem]

Also: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=393068

[jeisinger]

Thanks for the pointers. And yes, the fact that gn is checked into chromium is also a problem for v8 (which we work around by using a checked in gn binary...)

[tojocky]

Hi @jbergstroem ,

It is easy to build gn standalone.
here is a shell script that I'm using:

#!/bin/bash

set -e
set -v

# Get the sources
mkdir gn-standalone
cd gn-standalone
mkdir tools
cd tools
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/tools/gn
cd ..
#mkdir -p third_party/libevent
#cd third_party/libevent
#wget --no-check-certificate https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/chromium/+archive/master/third_party/libevent.tar.gz
#tar -xvzf libevent.tar.gz
#cd ../..
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/base
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/build
#git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/build/config
mkdir testing
cd testing
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/testing/gtest
cd ..

# Build
cd tools/gn
python ./bootstrap/bootstrap.py -s

# At this point, the resulting binary is at:
# gn-standalone/out/Release/gn

[jbergstroem]

@tojocky thanks; I've also used that snippet. It doesn't really solve the fact that gn is dependent on a lot of third party code bases which makes it less usable in this scenario. You should check out all progress that Fedor has been doing over here!