Support Ninja

[Risto97]

Are you planning on adding ninja-build support?

[kyu08]

Thanks for the submission!

ninja-build is new to me.

How do you use it? Please provide your use case and how can fzf-make improve it?

[Risto97]

https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja
Its basically almost equivalent to Make, but lighter and faster.
It is not meant to be written by hand, but is typically generated by CMake https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/generator/Ninja.html

It terms of usage, its basically the same as Make, the interface would be the same, just the parser will change

[kyu08]

How do you use it? Do you call ninja build like you would call make build?

I saw a description that Ninja can be used as a backend for CMake. What is the difference between using CMake and Ninja?

Also, I'd like to see a concrete example of the file that defines commands (like a Makefile for make).

[Risto97]

Exactly, Ninja can be used as backend (generator) for CMake.
The relation between CMake and Ninja is the same as relation between CMake and Make.
CMake is a build system generator, while Ninja (make) are build systems, so CMake generates Makefiles (build.ninja).
Where Make (Ninja) run the actual command execution.

Contrary to Make, Ninja was designed to be minimal and was intended to be generated, not written by hand.
As a result it typically gives slightly better performance when building projects.

The other difference I am aware between the Make and Ninja generators in CMake, is that ninja will produce a flat build.ninja file, while Makefiles would be split across several files, especially when subdirectories are used.
This should makes it easier to parse the Ninja files for purpose of fzf-make.

I uploaded below a simple CMake project that demonstrates different targets that can be created for Ninja and Make build systems.

ninja_example.tar.gz

I also included the build directory, that is useless for you (as it include absolute paths), but it lets take a look at build.ninja file without having to run CMake.

If you want to try to generate it and run it by yourself you can do the following:

tar xf ninja_example.tar.gz
cd ninja_example
mkdir build_ninja && cd build_ninja
cmake -GNinja ../

# Run targets:
ninja
ninja some_custom_target
ninja gen_outfile
ninja hello_custom_target

Alternatively to use Make you can do the following

cd ninja_example
mkdir build_make && cd build_make
cmake  ../

# Run targets:
make
make some_custom_target
make  gen_outfile
make  hello_custom_target

Hopefully this will give you a good understanding of how Ninja build system works.
Ask me if you have any more questions