Split GN installer_util into one that has no strings.

chrome/installer/util/BUILD.gn

Index: chrome/installer/util/BUILD.gn
diff --git a/chrome/installer/util/BUILD.gn b/chrome/installer/util/BUILD.gn
index ca137997c46c8cb6caabe52c4b23e36d6fe80f1d..fa0d4ba04e68ba1f4054e2e6658a4a91280fbb15 100644
--- a/chrome/installer/util/BUILD.gn
+++ b/chrome/installer/util/BUILD.gn
@@ -5,7 +5,38 @@
 import("//build/config/chrome_build.gni")
 import("//testing/test.gni")
 
-static_library("util") {
+# Generally you should depend on this target, see below for discussion.
+group("util") {
+  public_deps = [
+    ":with_no_strings_some_things_wont_work",
+  ]
+  if (is_win) {
+    public_deps += [ ":strings" ]
+  }
+}
+
+# chrome/installer/util has generated strings on Windows. These appear as
+# Windows resources and are fairly large (~200KB). They are generated by the
+# ":generate_strings" target and compiled by the ":strings" target.
+#
+# Some code, like the Windows chrome.exe (the small bootstrap binary, not
+# all of chrome.dll) code uses installer_util functions without calling any
+# functions that use the strings. And historically in the GYP build the strings
+# resource had to be manually linked, so the strings never ended up being in
+# chrome.exe and everything was fine.
+#
+# However, this is obviously a fragile and confusing situation. If you depend
+# on this target rather than going through the ":util" version that links the
+# strings above, anything that uses localized strings won't work. There is
+# no definition of what works and doesn't work, and this may also change over
+# time. As an example at the time of this writing, chrome.exe calls
+# BrowserDistribution::GetRegistryPath. This function doesn't use any strings,
+# but lots of other functions in BrowserDistribution do use localized strings.
+#
+# Ideally, this should be cleaved in two parts: the main "installer util" and
+# some kind of mini installer util that just contains the functions needed by
+# chrome.exe and any other clients that don't need the strings.
+static_library("with_no_strings_some_things_wont_work") {
   deps = [
     "//base",
     "//chrome:strings",
@@ -66,10 +97,12 @@ static_library("util") {
       "user_experiment.h",
     ]
 
-    public_deps = [
-      ":strings",
-    ]
     deps += [
+      # Need to depend on the generated strings target since files here
+      # depend on the generated header, but only depend on the ":strings"
+      # target (which actually compiles and causes the generated code to be
+      # linked) from the ":util" target.
+      ":generate_strings",
       "//base/third_party/dynamic_annotations",
       "//components/metrics",
       "//courgette:courgette_lib",
@@ -187,7 +220,10 @@ static_library("util") {
 }
 
 action("generate_strings") {
-  visibility = [ ":strings" ]
+  visibility = [
+    ":strings",
+    ":with_no_strings_some_things_wont_work",
+  ]
   script = "prebuild/create_string_rc.py"
 
   if (is_chrome_branded) {