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+# Build system overview
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+
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+Atom Shell uses `gyp` for project generation, and `ninja` for building, project
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+configurations can be found in `.gyp` and `.gypi` files.
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+
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+## Gyp files
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+
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+Following `gyp` files contain the main rules of building Atom Shell:
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+
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+* `atom.gyp` defines how Atom Shell itself is built.
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+* `common.gypi` adjusts the build configurations of Node to make it build
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+ together with Chromium.
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+* `vendor/brightray/brightray.gyp` defines how `brightray` is built, and
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+ includes the default configurations of linking with Chromium.
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+* `vendor/brightray/brightray.gypi` includes general build configurations about
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+ building.
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+
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+## Component build
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+
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+Since Chromium is a quite large project, the final linking stage would take
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+quite a few minutes, making it hard for development. In order to solve this,
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+Chromium introduces the "component build", which builds each component as a
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+separate shared library, so linking can be very quick, in sacrifice of file size
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+and performance.
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+
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+In Atom Shell we took a very similar approach: for `Debug` build, the binary
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+will be linked to shared library version of Chromium's components to achieve
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+fast linking time; for `Release` build, the binary will be linked to the static
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+library versions, so we can have best binary size and performance.
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+
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+## Minimal bootstrapping
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+
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+All the Chromium's prebuilt binaries are downloaded when running the bootstrap
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+script, by default both static libraries and shared libraries will be
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+downloaded, and the final size is between 800MB to 2GB according to the
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+platform.
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+
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+If you only want to build Atom Shell quickly for testing or development, you
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+can only download the shared library versions by passing the `--dev` parameter:
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+
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+```bash
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+$ ./script/boostrap.by --dev
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+$ ./script/build.by -c D
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+```
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+
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+## Two-phrase project generation
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+
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+Atom Shell links with different sets of libraries in `Release` and `Debug`
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+builds, however `gyp` doesn't support configuring different link settings for
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+different configurations.
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+
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+To work around this Atom Shell uses a `gyp` variable
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+`libchromiumcontent_component` to control which link settings to use, and only
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+generates one target when running `gyp`.
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+
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+## Target names
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+
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+Unlike most projects that use `Release` and `Debug` as target names, Atom Shell
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+uses `R` and `D` instead. This is because `gyp` randomly crashes if there is
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+only one `Release` or `Debug` build configuration is defined, and Atom Shell has
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+to only generate one target for one time as stated above.
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+
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+This only affects developers, if you are only building Atom Shell for rebranding
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+you are not affected.
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Cheng Zhao