Suggestions on how to fix this build issue?

[Richard Wilkes]

Last year, I was able to successfully build the skia source from these two commits:

DEPOT_TOOLS_COMMIT=4d3319e39c9b50747f47da35a351d428a38bcc82
SKIA_COMMIT=6fae0523629f9abf114d8b7413f71dc7295a13e0

A few months have gone by and I wanted to update to the latest source. However, I get the following failure when running the "python tools/git-sync-deps" step. Newer code much beyond the commit referenced above seems to insist on installing its own copy of python 3.9.x, then complaining bitterly because it isn't python 3.8.x:

ERROR at //BUILD.gn:1013:7: Script returned non-zero exit code.
      exec_script("gn/checkpath.py",
      ^----------
Current dir: /Users/rich/code/cskia/skia/build/
Command: vpython /Users/rich/code/cskia/skia/skia/gn/checkpath.py ../skia/third_party/externals/libgifcodec/libgifcodec.gni
Returned 1.
stderr:

[E2022-03-27T15:03:40.212575-07:00 32432 0 annotate.go:273] goroutine 1:
#0 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/venv/config.go:309 - venv.(*Config).resolvePythonInterpreter()
  reason: none of [/Users/rich/code/cskia/skia/depot_tools/boots...@3.8.10.chromium.23_bin/python/bin/python] matched specification 3.8.0

#1 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/venv/config.go:153 - venv.(*Config).resolveRuntime()
  reason: failed to resolve system Python interpreter

#2 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/venv/venv.go:143 - venv.With()
  reason: failed to resolve python runtime

#3 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/run.go:60 - vpython.Run()
#4 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/application/application.go:327 - application.(*application).mainImpl()
#5 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/application/application.go:416 - application.(*Config).Main.func1()
#6 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/application/support.go:46 - application.run()
#7 go.chromium.org/luci/vpython/application/application.go:415 - application.(*Config).Main()
#8 vpython/main.go:112 - main.mainImpl()
#9 vpython/main.go:118 - main.main()
#10 runtime/proc.go:225 - runtime.main()
#11 runtime/asm_amd64.s:1371 - runtime.goexit()

I can't seem to find how to get it to stop doing... nor provide python 3.8 in a way it can find and use. Note this is on macOS 12.3, but I've also tried older versions of the OS (as far back as 10.13) and have hit the exact same issue.

Does anyone have suggestions on how I might solve this? Better yet, does anyone know of a way to build Skia that doesn't rely on things like python?

Thanks for any help!

- Rich