[CMake] Ninja: a small build system closest in spirit to Make

[Nicolas Desprès]

Hi everyone,

Probably some of you are already aware of this new open-source project
coming from a Chrome developer at Google.

Its goal was to improve the build system performance of the Chrome
project. So it is designed to be a fast replacement for make.

He speaks about it in its blog here:

http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/02/ninja.html

You can find the source code here:

https://github.com/martine/ninja

and the manual here:

http://martine.github.com/ninja/manual.html

As mentioned in the documentation the input file for ninja are not
designed to be written by hand and should be generated.  So it
perfectly fits in CMake generator approach to build system.

Maybe it worth adding a new generator for Ninja in CMake.  I don't
know about the maturity/stability of the project, though it is still
very young (started in last October but still maintained today
according to the git log).  Also, if it is internally used at Google
for the Chrome project, I think it is not going to die.

I will try to find some time on my spare time to start writing a
generator for it.  Helps is welcome too :-)  I would like to see if it
really increases build time of project already using CMake, such as
boost or KDE.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Desprès