Chromium Switching from Ninja to Siso (opens in new tab)

(groups.google.com)

117 pointshortense9mo ago68 comments

68 comments

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

oldmanhorton9mo ago

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.

tomjakubowski9mo ago

GN at least used to generate Ninja files. So I suppose now it will be generating Siso files?

edit: asked and answered, Siso is a "drop-in" replacement for Ninja, so presumably it can read .ninja files, and so GN probably didn't need to change much to accommodate it.

RainyDayTmrw9mo ago

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.

tonyedgecombe9mo ago

>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.

bluGill9mo ago

I stronly disagree. While you use a fraction of the features you often mistake it works for it is right and to something subtle is wrong. You end up either not working or dedicating a lot of effort fixing weird corner cases that you didn't think of

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operator-name9mo ago

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.

jinwoo689mo ago

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

dijit9mo ago

Even so, a build system migration of any kind being anything other than Bazel given the design goals of Bazel and the heritage of Chrome is an implicit indictment of Bazel itself.

I say this as a fan of Bazel.

2 more replies

jefftk9mo ago

Bazel didn't even exist when they moved from gyp to ninja.

westurner9mo ago

Blaze (and gtest) did exist then, but it was integrated with Omega scheduler.

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jefftk9mo ago

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

enqk9mo ago

gyp to gn

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

csiegert9mo ago

Please add punctuation. I had to read it twice to understand.

jefftk9mo ago

Producing ninja files was an intermediate phase in the transition to gn. For most of its lifetime it was producing makefile.

operator-name9mo ago

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.

charcircuit9mo ago

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.

txdv9mo ago

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

out-of-ideas9mo ago

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

IshKebab9mo ago

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

operator-name9mo ago

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

nikanj9mo ago

It’s new

pjmlp9mo ago

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.

kichik9mo ago

Wasn't ninja invented by a Google employee?

rdtsc9mo ago

Sure, but only that team gets to put “designed and implemented new build system” on their resume. See how many meet/hangout/alo variants came out of Google. In companies of that size the “here” in NIH is a lot more localized to smaller units.

pjmlp9mo ago

Doesn't change the situation of being yet another NIH tool, because Google departments have so few of them.

mrlonglong9mo ago

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

tedunangst9mo ago

Is this consequential for a project the size of chromium?

lordofgibbons9mo ago

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

RainyDayTmrw9mo ago

For example, many Linux distributions want to compile everything in their main repositories from source, all the way down. There are comments as such in response to the mailing list announcements. Your average Linux distribution probably had Go available, but it previously wasn't on the critical path of anything.

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throwaway815239mo ago

If I'm going to compile Chromium from source, I probably want to compile the build system from source.

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kookamamie9mo ago

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

ahartmetz9mo ago

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.

kosolam9mo ago

Looks like the Google developer in the discussion is clueless.

kosolam9mo ago

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.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

68 comments

intexpress9mo ago

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

oldmanhorton9mo ago

tomjakubowski9mo ago

GN at least used to generate Ninja files. So I suppose now it will be generating Siso files?

edit: asked and answered, Siso is a "drop-in" replacement for Ninja, so presumably it can read .ninja files, and so GN probably didn't need to change much to accommodate it.

RainyDayTmrw9mo ago

tonyedgecombe9mo ago

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

bluGill9mo ago

1 more reply

operator-name9mo ago

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.

jinwoo689mo ago

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

dijit9mo ago

Even so, a build system migration of any kind being anything other than Bazel given the design goals of Bazel and the heritage of Chrome is an implicit indictment of Bazel itself.

I say this as a fan of Bazel.

2 more replies

jefftk9mo ago

Bazel didn't even exist when they moved from gyp to ninja.

westurner9mo ago

Blaze (and gtest) did exist then, but it was integrated with Omega scheduler.

1 more reply

jefftk9mo ago

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

enqk9mo ago

gyp to gn

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