node_with_gn

Scripts to build Node.js with GN.

How to use

First run bootstrap Scripts to download Node.js and its dependencies:

./scripts/bootstrap.js

Then start building:

./scripts/build.js

Build configurations

By default 3 configurations are generated: Debug, Release and Component. The detailed arguments can be found in the bootstrap.js script.

The component build is a concept in Chromium that, each component is built as a shared library instead of static library, which can dramatically reduce linking time. It is recommended for daily development work.

To build a specific config, pass the out directory to build.js:

./scripts/build.js out/Component

Cross compilation

To build for a different cpu, pass --target-cpu to bootstrap.

./scripts/bootstrap.js --target-cpu=arm64

To build for Windows on macOS or Linux, first follow Cross-compiling Chrome/win to generate a vs toolchain package and put it in current directory, then pass --target-os to bootstrap.

(You can find a working example in this repo's GitHub Actions workflow.)

./scripts/bootstrap.js --target-os=win

Build without clang

By default all platforms use prebuilt clang binaries from Chromium project for building, you can choose to use system clang or other compilers too. However please note that V8 does not officially support these methods and build might fail.

On macOS to build with clang from XCode, pass use_xcode_clang=true:

./scripts/bootstrap.js --extra-args="use_xcode_clang=true"

To build with the default cc and cxx on your system, pass --no-clang:

./scripts/bootstrap.js --no-clang