Chromium Switching from Ninja to Siso

[intexpress]

Note that Siso uses Starlark (https://chromium.googlesource.com/infra/infra/+/refs/heads/m...) which is the build language of Bazel

I wonder if the end goal is to use Bazel for Chromium and Siso is an incremental step to get there

[oldmanhorton]

A handful of other areas are configured using Starlark in chromium. This particular use is in a very different capacity than Bazel - the Bazel equivalent in chromium is GN, and I have not seen any signs that GN will be replaced any time soon.

[RainyDayTmrw]

Kinda impressive and terrifying that Chromium needs its own build system. Kinda strange that Bazel was right there, also from Google, and they not only choose not to use it, but also reference it in the name of the new tool.

[tonyedgecombe]

>Kinda impressive and terrifying that Chromium needs its own build system.

This is one area where I think it makes some sense to build your own. Most projects only use a fraction of the capability of a typical build system. The last time I did this I managed the whole thing in just 300 lines of code.

[operator-name]

If Android was anything to go by, migrating build systems is a risky endeavour. Miso claims compatibility with ninja, so I’m guessing this route was deemed easier to make incremental improvements.

[jinwoo68]

To be fair, Bazel didn't exist when Chrome started.

[jefftk]

I think this makes Chrome build system number four: scons, gyp, ninja, siso.

[enqk]

gyp to gn

gyp could produce ninja files. gn is short for generate ninja. Now gn produces files compatible with siso

[operator-name]

https://pkg.go.dev/go.chromium.org/infra/build/siso#section-...

Ninja compatible, for the flags that chromium uses. There’s some behaviour they’ve tuned for their use case.

[charcircuit]

I wonder if AOSP will also move over to Siso. Since it is advertised as a drop in replacement it would take less resources than the Bazel migration which got canceled. The readme explicitly calls out a feature used by AOSP, so it is plausible that thought was put into it.

[txdv]

Is there an explanation what siso provides that ninja does not?

[out-of-ideas]

> Siso is developed by the Chrome Build Infra Team at Google as a drop-in replacement for Ninja to support remote execution natively.

[IshKebab]

Yes, if you click the article and read it it tells you.

[operator-name]

https://pkg.go.dev/go.chromium.org/infra/build/siso#readme-k...

[nikanj]

It’s new

[pjmlp]

Another NIH build tool?

Never heard of it, and ninja is the only way to build C++20 modules alongside CMake.

Then again, that is something that Chromium probably will never bother with.

[kichik]

Wasn't ninja invented by a Google employee?

[mrlonglong]

They've added a dependency on Go with the addition of siso.

[tedunangst]

Is this consequential for a project the size of chromium?

[lordofgibbons]

How so? you don't need the go build toolchain installed to use Go binaries.

[kookamamie]

If Siso is a drop-in alternative to Ninja, are there builds of Siso usable for building Ninja-projects, in general?

[ahartmetz]

They want to "improve their build processes", huh? Yeah, there are some problems, like ginormous build times, for which there are some very well-known and pedestrian solutions ("physical code design"). But these aren't impressive enough to get promoted.

Just Google things.

[kosolam]

Looks like the Google developer in the discussion is clueless.

[kosolam]

I just wanted to point out after reading the thread of the Chromium maintainers that it looked to me like they rushed out this change without proper consideration of all possible implications. Other comments there show that the developer isn’t intimately familiar in depth with the Chromium project at large, yet making changes with very wide impact. I apologize if anyone got me wrong, especially if there are any Googler here that took this personally.