ninja-build/ninja

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

13168 stars · 1817 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Ninja is a small, fast build system whose low-level build files are designed to be generated by higher-level tools like CMake. It focuses on executing incremental builds as quickly as possible and is used by projects such as Chrome, LLVM, and Android.

Use cases

• speed up incremental builds of large C++ projects
• use CMake's Ninja backend to build faster
• build Chrome, LLVM, or Android-style codebases
• embed a fast low-level build executor into a higher-level build system
• replace make for faster compile times

When to choose

• you need maximum build execution speed for large projects
• your build files are generated by CMake or another meta-build system
• you want a simple, single-binary build tool

When to avoid

• you want to hand-write convenient, high-level build scripts
• you need built-in dependency management or package features
• your project is small enough that make suffices

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

build-tool cli developer-tools developer-tools compilers windows cpp cli build-system incremental-builds cmake-backend compilation command-line linux macos

Member repositories

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="ninja-build/ninja")