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

[Matt Williams]

2011/2/10 Nicolas Desprès <nicolas.despres at gmail.com>:
> 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.

Maybe you should open a feature request about this
(http://www.cmake.org/Bug/bug_report_page.php) to keep track of
progress in a central location.

In other news I've started building packages of Ninja for a number of
Linux distros in the OBS. You can see it at
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=ninja&project=home%3AMilliams

-- 
Matt Williams
http://milliams.com