Ninja throws 'lexing error' when cross-compiling Chromium for Linux on macOS

[Hakan Bakkalbasi]

I'm trying to build Chromium for Linux/x64 using macOS 10.12.5. I'm a newbie to this stuff so please forgive my ignorance. According to the documentation on how GN handles cross-compiling this should be possible by following the below steps, but I'm running into an error during compilation.

What am I doing wrong? This works correctly when compiling for macOS (same commands as below, excluding the --args parameters in step 1).

1. Setting up the build works fine:

   $ gn gen out/Default --args='target_os="linux" target_cpu="x64"' 
   Done. Made 6244 targets from 1317 files in 4062ms
   

2. But there's an error while compiling:

   $ ninja -C out/Default chrome
   ninja: Entering directory `out/Default'
   ninja: error: obj/content/browser/browser.ninja:2: lexing error 
   

Here's browser.ninja:2:

$ head -2 out/Default/obj/content/browser/browser.ninja
defines = -DENABLE_SCREEN_CAPTURE=1 -DV8_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS -DUSE_UDEV -DUSE_AURA=1 -DUSE_PANGO=1 -DUSE_CAIRO=1 -DUSE_GLIB=1 -DUSE_NSS_CERTS=1 -DUSE_X11=1 -DFULL_SAFE_BROWSING -DSAFE_BROWSING_CSD -DSAFE_BROWSING_DB_LOCAL -DCHROMIUM_BUILD -DFIELDTRIAL_TESTING_ENABLED -DCR_CLANG_REVISION=\"301384-2\" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS -D__STDC_FORMAT_MACROS -DCOMPONENT_BUILD -D_DEBUG -DDYNAMIC_ANNOTATIONS_ENABLED=1 -DWTF_USE_DYNAMIC_ANNOTATIONS=1 -D_GLIBCXX_DEBUG=1 -DCONTENT_IMPLEMENTATION -DV8_USE_EXTERNAL_STARTUP_DATA -DATK_LIB_DIR=\"\[\[\],\[\],\[\],\[\],\[\]\]\\" -DUSE_GCONF -DGLIB_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED=GLIB_VERSION_2_32 -DGLIB_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED=GLIB_VERSION_2_26 -DGL_GLEXT_PROTOTYPES -DUSE_GLX -DUSE_EGL -DU_USING_ICU_NAMESPACE=0 -DU_ENABLE_DYLOAD=0 -DICU_UTIL_DATA_IMPL=ICU_UTIL_DATA_FILE -DUCHAR_TYPE=uint16_t -DSK_IGNORE_LINEONLY_AA_CONVEX_PATH_OPTS -DSK_HAS_PNG_LIBRARY -DSK_HAS_WEBP_LIBRARY -DSK_HAS_JPEG_LIBRARY -DSKIA_DLL -DGR_GL_IGNORE_ES3_MSAA=0 -DSK_SUPPORT_GPU=1 -DLEVELDB_PLATFORM_CHROMIUM=1 -DGOOGLE_PROTOBUF_NO_RTTI -DGOOGLE_PROTOBUF_NO_STATIC_INITIALIZER -DHAVE_PTHREAD -DPROTOBUF_USE_DLLS -DBORINGSSL_SHARED_LIBRARY -DUSING_V8_SHARED -DFEATURE_ENABLE_VOICEMAIL -DEXPAT_RELATIVE_PATH -DGTEST_RELATIVE_PATH -DNO_SOUND_SYSTEM -DWEBRTC_CHROMIUM_BUILD -DWEBRTC_POSIX -DWEBRTC_LINUX -DNO_MAIN_THREAD_WRAPPING -DFLAC__NO_DLL

This ticket is the only mention of lexing error and Chromium I could find on the web.

Thanks in advance.