Ninja (build system)

Last updated
Ninja
Developer(s) Evan Martin
Initial release2012;13 years ago (2012) [1]
Stable release
1.13.1 [2]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 11 July 2025;46 days ago (11 July 2025)
Repository
Written in C++, Python
Operating system Linux, macOS, Windows
Type Software development tools
License Apache License 2.0 [3]
Website ninja-build.org   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Ninja is a 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. [5]

Contents

Build system

In essence, Ninja is meant to replace Make, which is slow when performing incremental (or no-op) builds. [6] 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. [7] It's also used to build Android (via Makefile translation by Kati), [8] and is used by most developers working on LLVM. [9]

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 [10] are popular build management tools that support creating build files for Ninja. [11]

Example

Below is an example of a Ninja build file that compiles two C source files (source1.c and source2.c) into object files and then links them into an executable called myprogram. It defines two rules: one for compiling (cc) and one for linking (link):

rulecccommand=gcc-c-o$out$indescription=CC$outrulelinkcommand=gcc-o$out$indescription=LINK$outbuild source1.o:ccsource1.cbuild source2.o:ccsource2.cbuild myprogram:linksource1.osource2.o

References

  1. ↑ Martin, Evan. "Google Groups: ninja-build" . Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  2. ↑ "Release v1.13.1". 11 July 2025. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
  3. ↑ "COPYING". Github. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  4. ↑ "Google man open sources Chrome build system".
  5. ↑ "Ninja, a small build system with a focus on speed". ninja-build.org. Retrieved 21 January 2025.
  6. ↑ Röthlisberger, David. "The Ninja build tool". LWN. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  7. ↑ "Ninja". The Performance Of Open Source Applications. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  8. ↑ "aosp mailing list".
  9. ↑ "LLVM documentation".
  10. ↑ "gn - Git at Google".
  11. ↑ Kitware. "cmake Documentation" . Retrieved 18 June 2017.
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