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+ |
+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](http://martine.github.com/ninja/). |
+ |
+## 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` 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. |