Cannot build skia.dll on windows platform

[Jonathan Turcotte]

Hi,

I am new to developing on windows and am attempting to build skia.dll following the steps laid out here.

I have depot_tools, python, and git working, and I have been doing everything from the command prompt instead of using Cygwin. I have also tried using ninja, msvs-ninja, and msvs to build it, with ninja being the only method that doesn't consistently fail. 

However, every time I attempt to build with ninja, I end up with an empty skia.dll file. The commands I am using to build are:

set "GYP_GENERATORS=ninja"
set "GYP_DEFINES=skia_shared_lib=1, skia_gpu=0, skia_pdf=0"
python bin/sync-and-gyp
ninja -C out/Release skia_lib

It throws ninja: warning: multiple rules generate skia.dll at the beginning, but my research led me to believe that these could be harmless. Otherwise, the build completes with no errors or warnings. 

I've been using DLL export viewer and dumpbin to check if the dll is actually exporting any functions. Dll export viewer shows nothing, while dumpbin just shows a couple of functions like .text , .data, etc. 

I've had some success building dm and running dm.exe, but not when I use the skia_shared_lib=1 flag. Including that flag and attempting to build dm gives LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'skia.dll.lib'

Any help would be much appreciated!

[Shawn Riordan]

You don't mention adding an environment variable.

I remember there being a step for that.

I think you had to add depot_tools to your path

[Jonathan Turcotte]

Yes, I ran 

set PATH=%PATH%;c:\path\to\depot_tools

before starting, and can confirm depot_tools runs properly.