docs: Add "Build system overview" chapter
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docs/development/build-system-overview.md
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docs/development/build-system-overview.md
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# Build system overview
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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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## Gyp files
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Following `gyp` files contain the main rules of building Atom Shell:
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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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## Component build
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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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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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## Minimal bootstrapping
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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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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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```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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## Two-phrase project generation
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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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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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## Target names
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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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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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