Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 12, 2026

GYP (software)

GYP is an obsolete build automation tool created in 2011 by Google.

Last revised
Jun 12, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
307 w
Citations
9
Source
GYP
Original authorMark Mentovai
DeveloperChromium.org
Written inPython
Operating systemmacOS, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows
TypeBuild automation programming
LicenseBSD license
Websitegyp.gsrc.io Edit this on Wikidata
Repository

GYP (generate your projects) is an obsolete build automation tool created in 2011 by Google.1

Tool

Its purpose was to generate native integrated development environment (IDE) project files (such as Visual Studio and Xcode) for building the Chromium web browser and is licensed as open source software using the BSD software license.

The functionality of GYP is similar to the CMake build tool. GYP processes a file that contains a JSON dictionary2 in order to generate one or more target project make files. The single source .GYP file is generic while the target files are specific to each targeted build tool.

In 2016, the Chromium project replaced GYP with GN, a tool that generates ninja builds. The switch to GN resulted in a 20x speedup for their use case.34 Other projects that migrated from GYP to GN include the V8 Javascript engine,5 WebRTC6 and Dart.7

Software projects that are still built using GYP include Node.js8 and Telegram.9

See also

See also

References

References

External links