Ninja is a small build system developed by Evan Martin,[4] a Google employee. Ninja has a focus on speed and it differs from other build systems in two major respects: it is designed to have its input files generated by a higher-level build system, and it is designed to run builds as fast as possible.
 | |
| Developer(s) | Evan Martin |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 2012[1] |
| Stable release | 1.12.1[2] 
/ 11 May 2024 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C++, Python |
| Operating system | Linux, macOS, Windows |
| Type | Software development tools |
| License | Apache License 2.0[3] |
| Website | ninja-build |
Build system
editIn essence, Ninja is meant to replace Make, which is slow when performing incremental (or no-op) builds.[5] This can considerably slow down developers working on large projects, such as Google Chrome which compiles 40,000 input files into a single executable. In fact, Google Chrome is a main user and motivation for Ninja.[6] It's also used to build Android (via Makefile translation by Kati),[7] and is used by most developers working on LLVM.[8]
In contrast to Make, Ninja lacks features such as string manipulation, as Ninja build files are not meant to be written by hand. Instead, a "build generator" should be used to generate Ninja build files. Gyp, CMake, Meson, and gn[9] are popular build management software tools which support creating build files for Ninja.[10]
Example
editrule cc
command = gcc -c -o $out $in
description = CC $out
rule link
command = gcc -o $out $in
description = LINK $out
build source1.o: cc source1.c
build source2.o: cc source2.c
build myprogram: link source1.o source2.o
References
edit- ^ Martin, Evan. "Google Groups: ninja-build". Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ "Release 1.12.1". 11 May 2024. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
- ^ "COPYING". Github. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
- ^ "Google man open sources Chrome build system".
- ^ Röthlisberger, David. "The Ninja build tool". LWN. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ "Ninja". The Performance Of Open Source Applications. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
- ^ "aosp mailing list".
- ^ "LLVM documentation".
- ^ "gn - Git at Google".
- ^ Kitware. "cmake Documentation". Retrieved 18 June 2017.