External build - e.g. cmake or meson

[Jamie Madill]

Hey GN devs,

Is it possible to build & run tests on the bots that invoke external build tools to generate targets? Is there a way to encode information from the external build to GN that would allow the "analyze" and run-time dependency computation steps to work?

Happy to provide more context & examples.

Thanks,

Jamie

[Ben Boeckel]

CMake, at least, supports generating files that can be included via
`subninja` from another build. If that's not supported (and I wouldn't
be surprised if not), I doubt GN supports such information extraction
for more meaningful integration (though that's just a guess).

FD: CMake developer, GN lurker.

--Ben

[Brett Wilson]

You can do whatever step you want from an action, including running cmake or some other build tool.

But to GN that will be one target, and anything you can't describe in terms of that action's inputs and outputs won't be known to GN, including the analyze tool.

Brett