Ninja is a small build system with a focus on speed.
This section is not strictly required for LFS if not using systemd. On the other hand, ninja associated to meson makes a powerful build system combination, which is expected to be used more and more often. It is required for several packages in the BLFS book.
When run, ninja normally runs a maximum number of processes in parallel. By default this is the number of cores on the system plus two. In some cases this can overheat a CPU or run a system out of memory. If run from the command line, passing a -jN parameter will limit the number of parallel processes, but some packages embed the execution of ninja and do not pass a -j parameter.
Using the optional procedure below allows a user to limit the number of parallel processes via an environment variable, NINJAJOBS. For example, setting:
export NINJAJOBS=4
will limit ninja to four parallel processes.
If desired, add the capability to use the environment variable NINJAJOBS by running:
sed -i '/int Guess/a \ int j = 0;\ char* jobs = getenv( "NINJAJOBS" );\ if ( jobs != NULL ) j = atoi( jobs );\ if ( j > 0 ) return j;\ ' src/ninja.cc
Build Ninja with:
python3 configure.py --bootstrap
The meaning of the build option:
--bootstrap
This parameter forces ninja to rebuild itself for the current system.
To test the results, issue:
./ninja ninja_test ./ninja_test --gtest_filter=-SubprocessTest.SetWithLots
Install the package:
install -vm755 ninja /usr/bin/ install -vDm644 misc/bash-completion /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/ninja install -vDm644 misc/zsh-completion /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_ninja