diff --git a/lib/internal/process.js b/lib/internal/process.js
index 70186f0e66deaa..c94b0a9d5fc442 100644
--- a/lib/internal/process.js
+++ b/lib/internal/process.js
@@ -118,16 +118,9 @@ function setupMemoryUsage() {
 function setupConfig(_source) {
   // NativeModule._source
   // used for `process.config`, but not a real module
-  var config = _source.config;
+  const config = _source.config;
   delete _source.config;
 
-  // strip the gyp comment line at the beginning
-  config = config.split('\n')
-      .slice(1)
-      .join('\n')
-      .replace(/"/g, '\\"')
-      .replace(/'/g, '"');
-
   process.config = JSON.parse(config, function(key, value) {
     if (value === 'true') return true;
     if (value === 'false') return false;
diff --git a/tools/js2c.py b/tools/js2c.py
index f7951617d34064..d2d63ad571205d 100755
--- a/tools/js2c.py
+++ b/tools/js2c.py
@@ -261,6 +261,11 @@ def JS2C(source, target):
     if '/' in name or '\\' in name:
       name = '/'.join(re.split('/|\\\\', name)[1:])
 
+    # if its a gypi file we're going to want it as json
+    # later on anyway, so get it out of the way now
+    if name.endswith(".gypi"):
+      lines = re.sub(r'#.*?\n', '', lines)
+      lines = re.sub(r'\'', '"', lines)
     name = name.split('.', 1)[0]
     var = name.replace('-', '_').replace('/', '_')
     key = '%s_key' % var