Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

build2 VS Ninja Build

Compare build2 VS Ninja Build and see what are their differences

build2 logo build2

build2 is an open-source (MIT), cross-platform build toolchain for developing and packaging C and...

Ninja Build logo Ninja Build

Ninja is a small build system with a focus on speed.
  • build2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-08-12
  • Ninja Build Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-14

build2 videos

Review of LUXA’s hard gel BUILD2 in BLUSH | NAILS | Nail overlay

Ninja Build videos

FORTNITE STW: HERE IS THE BEST NINJA BUILD (AFTER MONTHS OF TESTING)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to build2 and Ninja Build)
Front End Package Manager
Package Manager
100 100%
0% 0
JavaScript Package Manager
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Ninja Build might be a bit more popular than build2. We know about 22 links to it since March 2021 and only 16 links to build2. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

build2 mentions (16)

  • C++ Papercuts
    As the name suggests, this wraps the whatever build system that the dependency is using rather than replacing it with Meson. Say if you depend on Boost and Qt, you will end up using both Boost Build and CMake in addition to Meson (most likely there will be a couple of more build systems if you are also building Boost's and Qt's own dependencies such as ICU). This has two major drawbacks: 1. The build in... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Sharing Saturday #472
    Which reminds me that I could package libtcode for build2 as that's what I'm using for MEGASTRUCTURES. I already packaged ENTT and fmt before and it's available on the OSS repository so it might be quite easy to do if libtcod dont have too many dependencies. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Sharing Saturday #469
    After build2 devs added a missing feature that was preventing me from correctly running the python scripts from godot-cpp that generates the C++ bindings (the build2 devs were actually hitting similar issues and I was lucky to reach it while they were working on a solution), I managed to complete a working version of the build2 package of godot-cpp. As a reminder, godot-cpp is the library you need to use that... Source: about 1 year ago
  • Sharing Saturday #467
    The first step is to do some scaffolding to easily build my C++ model from Prototype 1 as a Godot Extension, which also implies building godot-cpp which can be done with Scons or CMake easily as their scripts are provided, but I actually want to use build2 which is what I like to use these days in my own projects in C++. I could build godot-cpp in CMake and then link to it using my project under build2 but I kind... Source: about 1 year ago
  • CPP, C++ Pain Points from the results of the 2023 Annual C++ Developer Survey reviewed
    On the subject of the difficulties with setting up a CI pipeline, I want to give a shout-out to Build2, which is incredible in this regard. Source: about 1 year ago
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Ninja Build mentions (22)

  • TypeScript's Successor is Waiting, and You'll Never Want to Turn Back
    Under the hood, Rescript uses a build system called Ninja. Ninja is similar to Make, but cross-platform and more minimal/performant. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Using Make – writing less Makefile
    Ninja was super easy to pick up even after using make for some time (10+ years). GN is just a ninja generator that is optional. https://gn.googlesource.com/gn/+/main/docs/quick_start.md https://ninja-build.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Ask HN: What outdated tech are you still using and are perfectly happy with?
    Really? I thought most new projects were switching to ninja[^1] and have never used it. [^1]: https://ninja-build.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • What was used to build C++ programs before Cmake?
    Ninja showed real promise for a while, but then CMake grew up and people stopped seeing a reason to leave it behind. Source: 12 months ago
  • Building and Running Pidgin and Finch 3
    Now that you have your build system all generated you can go ahead and build everything. By default Meson will use Ninja as the build tool. Ninja is similar to Make but much much faster. You can also generate additional build systems but that's outside of the scope of this post. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing build2 and Ninja Build, you can also consider the following products

Conan - Conan is an Action-Adventure, Hack and Slash and Single-player video game developed by Nihilistic Software and published by THQ.

Meson - Meson is an open source build system meant to be both extremely fast, and, even more importantly...

Vcpkg - C++ Library Manager for Windows, Linux, and macOS

SCons - SCons is an Open Source software construction tool—that is, a next-generation build tool.

Hunter package manager - CMake driven cross-platform package manager for C/C++.

GNU Make - GNU Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files.