[webkit-dev] Common build system (was Re: WebKit Wishes)

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Feb 4, 2013, at 10:46 AM, Mark Mentovai <mark at chromium.org> wrote:

> GYP was written in Python to address point (b). Python was already part of the baseline requirements on all platforms, so we already had Python available everywhere we needed it. There are no dependencies on external binaries, and no compiled code needs to be checked in anywhere or maintained as part of a base image.
> 
> As for point (a), you can easily have a top-level Makefile not generated by GYP that says “run GYP to produce the build files for whatever environment you like and then pass control to that build system to do the rest of the build. Developers who like it can use ninja for their own builds, and your bots can use Xcode or make if that’s a requirement (or if ninja doesn’t meet your requirements given point (b)).

Checking in the generated Xcode projects is another alternative. The Makefile might be better for the reasons you suggest, though.

I'm reasonably confident at this point that Gyp can meet our hard requirements. Our remaining issues are finding time to do it and comprehensibility/readability of the syntax.

> 
> I’d be happy to discuss this further with anyone who’s interested in moving in this direction.

That would be much appreciated. I'll ping you once we have somebody to work on this.

Regards,
Maciej