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brucedawson c218634e11 Update Windows build instructions for VS 2015

Now that VS 2015 is the only supported compiler this updates the Windows
build instructions to remove all references to VS 2013.

This also adds back the step numbers for steps 3 and 4, which improves
the structure and resolves the dangling references to these steps.

The recommend .sln file to load was changed from all.sln to chrome.sln.

The block indenting for installing VS 2015 was removed. The original
goal was, I believe, to indent that section *and* the Google employees
section. This never happened and the indenting never shows up reasonably
so I'm removing it.

I tested the changes by viewing them at http://dillinger.io/

BUG=440500

Review URL: https://codereview.chromium.org/1879233009

Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#387652}

2016-04-15 18:28:45 +00:00

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Windows Build Instructions

Setting up Windows

You must set your Windows system locale to English, or else you may get build errors about "The file contains a character that cannot be represented in the current code page."

Setting up the environment for Visual Studio

You must build with Visual Studio 2015 Update 2; no other version is supported.

You must have Windows 7 x64 or later. x86 OSs are unsupported.

Step 1: Getting depot_tools

Get depot_tools.

Step 2: Getting the compiler toolchain

Follow the appropriate path below:

Open source contributors

As of March 11, 2016 Chromium requires Visual Studio 2015 to build.

Install Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 or later - Community Edition should work if its license is appropriate for you. Use the Custom Install option and select:

Visual C++, which will select three sub-categories including MFC
Universal Windows Apps Development Tools > Tools
Universal Windows Apps Development Tools > Windows 10 SDK (10.0.10586)

You must have the 10586 SDK installed or else you will hit compile errors such as redefined macros.

Run set DEPOT_TOOLS_WIN_TOOLCHAIN=0, or set that variable in your global environment.

Compilation is done through ninja, not Visual Studio.

Google employees

Run: download_from_google_storage --config and follow the authentication instructions. Note that you must authenticate with your @google.com credentials, not @chromium.org. Enter "0" if asked for a project-id.

Once you've done this, the toolchain will be installed automatically for you in Step 3, below (near the end of the step).

The toolchain will be in depot_tools\win_toolchain\vs_files\<hash>, and windbg can be found in depot_tools\win_toolchain\vs_files\<hash>\win_sdk\Debuggers.

If you want the IDE for debugging and editing, you will need to install it separately, but this is optional and not needed to build Chromium.

Step 3: Getting the Code

Follow the steps to check out the code (largely fetch chromium).

Step 4: Building

Build the target you are interested in.

ninja -C out\Debug chrome

Alternative (Graphical user interface): Open a generated .sln file such as chrome.sln, right-click the chrome project and select build. This will invoke the real step 4 above. Do not build the whole solution since that conflicts with ninja's build management and everything will explode. Substitute the build directory given to -C with out\Debug_x64 for 64-bit builds in GYP, or whatever build directory you have configured if using GN.

Performance tips

Have a lot of fast CPU cores and enough RAM to keep them all busy. (Minimum recommended is 4-8 fast cores and 16-32 GB of RAM)
Reduce file system overhead by excluding build directories from antivirus and indexing software.
Store the build tree on a fast disk (preferably SSD).
If you are primarily going to be doing debug development builds, you should use the component build:
- for GYP set GYP_DEFINES=component=shared_library
- for GN, set the build arg is_component_build = true. This will generate many DLLs and enable incremental linking, which makes linking much faster in Debug.

Still, expect build times of 30 minutes to 2 hours when everything has to be recompiled.

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