1680127 - Consider using bindgen as a binary rather than a build-time dependency.

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: General, task, P3)

Description

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

I know we've talked about this a couple times... This would have the benefit improving build-times in two ways:

• Not having to compile bindgen and dependencies.
• Using a release bindgen binary rather than unoptimized code.

Drawback of being yet another thing we need to pull from taskcluster, but bindgen seems pretty stable so maybe not a huge issue.

I have a hacky prototype for the second bullet point above, which seems to help with build-times locally, and proves that it's feasible, we just need to decide whether it's worth doing it and if so, finish it.

We only have one bindgen dependency not-in-tree, but we own that repo as well (neqo).

Mike, I know you've profiled build times much more than I have, do you have a sense whether this is worth it or not?

See https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=7745fd165074b1114a45bb258e2d2f610c8fc9e4 for my current tree (which will obviously not build on automation as I haven't set up all the taskcluster artifacts stuff).

Comment 1

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

It may or may not help, and the answer also depends on how bug 1680080 moved the needle. It would need to be analyzed more thoroughly, and being wary of dependencies of bindgen possibly already being used for other things.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.