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Ninja Build VS Azure DevOps

Compare Ninja Build VS Azure DevOps and see what are their differences

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Ninja Build logo Ninja Build

Ninja is a small build system with a focus on speed.

Azure DevOps logo Azure DevOps

Visual Studio dev tools & services make app development easy for any platform & language. Try our Mac & Windows code editor, IDE, or Azure DevOps for free.
  • Ninja Build Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-14
  • Azure DevOps Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-05-21

Ninja Build features and specs

  • Speed
    Ninja is designed for high performance, making it one of the fastest build systems available. It minimizes the time spent on tasks such as parsing, dependency resolution, and build command execution.
  • Simplicity
    Ninja’s configuration syntax is straightforward and concise, reducing the complexity involved in setting up builds and allowing for a clear overview of build rules.
  • Parallelism
    Ninja excels at handling parallel builds, leveraging multiple cores effectively to decrease overall build times.
  • Incremental Builds
    Ninja efficiently handles incremental builds by only recompiling what is necessary, which significantly speeds up iterative development processes.
  • Integration
    Ninja is often used as the backend for more complex build systems (e.g., CMake), making it a versatile tool within a larger toolchain.

Possible disadvantages of Ninja Build

  • Limited Features
    Ninja is deliberately minimalist, lacking many of the features found in other build systems, such as built-in support for complex dependency management and custom build steps.
  • Learning Curve
    While Ninja itself has a simple syntax, the learning curve can be steep for those unfamiliar with how build systems work or for those coming from more feature-rich environments.
  • Dependency on Generators
    Ninja often requires an external generator (like CMake) to create its build files, which can add to the setup complexity and introduce dependencies on other tools.
  • Limited Scripting Capabilities
    Unlike some build systems that offer extensive scripting support (e.g., Python in SCons), Ninja's functionality is largely limited to what its syntax and predefined rules allow.
  • Less Flexibility
    Due to its minimalist nature, Ninja may not be as flexible as other build systems, potentially limiting its use in more complex or unusual build scenarios.

Azure DevOps features and specs

  • Comprehensive Suite
    Azure DevOps offers a complete suite of tools for DevOps practices including Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, Azure Boards, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts, making it a one-stop solution.
  • Scalability
    Azure DevOps is highly scalable, catering to organizations of all sizes—from small startups to large enterprises.
  • Integrations
    Seamlessly integrates with numerous third-party tools and services, as well as other Microsoft products like Azure, making it highly flexible.
  • Customization
    Offers extensive customization options such as personalized dashboards, customized pipelines, and tailor-made workflows to suit specific project needs.
  • Cloud-Agility
    Being a cloud-based service, it offers the benefits of easy access, regular updates, and reduced need for maintenance.
  • Security
    Provides robust security features including role-based access control, auditing, and compliance with various industry standards.
  • Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
    Supports end-to-end CI/CD processes, making it easier to automate builds, tests, and deployments.
  • Community and Support
    Large community of users and strong support from Microsoft, offering plenty of resources for troubleshooting and getting help.

Possible disadvantages of Azure DevOps

  • Complexity
    The rich feature set can be overwhelming for new users, requiring a steep learning curve.
  • Cost
    Can be expensive for small teams and organizations, particularly if advanced features and higher user limits are required.
  • Azure Dependency
    While it integrates well with other cloud providers, the full potential of Azure DevOps is best realized when used in conjunction with other Azure services.
  • Performance
    Users have reported occasional performance issues, particularly with complex pipelines or large repositories.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    As a cloud-based service, Azure DevOps offers limited capabilities when offline access is needed.
  • Usability
    Some users find the interface to be less intuitive compared to other DevOps tools in the market, requiring additional training and adaptation.

Ninja Build videos

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

Azure DevOps videos

Agile with Visual Studio Team Services

More videos:

  • Review - The Top 5 BEST VSTs of 2018
  • Review - Introduction to Azure DevOps
  • Review - Visual Studio Team Services vs Team Foundation Server
  • Review - Should You Buy Purity VST still ? "Top 5 BEST VSTs of 2020"
  • Review - Azure DevOps Project, is it Worth it?
  • Review - Git with Visual Studio Team Services
  • Review - Pull Requests in Azure DevOps

Category Popularity

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Front End Package Manager
Git
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JS Build Tools
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Code Collaboration
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User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ninja Build and Azure DevOps

Ninja Build Reviews

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Azure DevOps Reviews

Top 7 GitHub Alternatives You Should Know (2024)
Azure DevOps is a cloud-based platform from Microsoft that offers a suite of tools and features for the entire software development lifecycle.
Source: snappify.com
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
Azure Pipelines tightly integrates with GitHub to display pipeline statuses in your PRs, run jobs automatically in response to repository events, and automatically deploy your projects. The solution is also extensible with custom tasks and integrations, making it a good fit for teams that need to retain Jenkins’ customization capabilities but want a managed service that’s...
Source: spacelift.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Azure DevOps should be more popular than Ninja Build. It has been mentiond 99 times since March 2021. 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.

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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year 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: almost 2 years 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 2 years ago
View more

Azure DevOps mentions (99)

  • The Pain That Is GitHub Actions
    Although, I never saw a public announcement of this discontinuation, ADO is kind of abandoned AFAICT and even their landing page hints to use GitHub Enterprise instead [1]. [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/devops. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Top 17 DevOps AI Tools [2025]
    Azure DevOps is a comprehensive set of tools and services provided by Microsoft. It is one of the most used DevOps AI tools when integrated with Azure’s AI and machine learning services. This integration enhances CI/CD processes, test automation, and infrastructure management. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Azure Container Instances vs Sliplane
    By default ACI deploys containers from a registry, which means if you want to setup a CI/CD pipeline, you need to configure some addional services like Azure Container Registry to store your images and Azure DevOps to build your images. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • The Hidden Costs of Poor Code Quality: Why Testing Matters
    Microsoft's Azure DevOps team saw 80% fewer customer-reported bugs in 6 months with automated testing. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Effective Software Development Workflow: From Idea to Delivery
    Azure DevOps: Comprehensive CI/CD by Microsoft for software delivery. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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.

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

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

CircleCI - CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.

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

Travis CI - Simple, flexible, trustworthy CI/CD tools. Join hundreds of thousands who define tests and deployments in minutes, then scale up simply with parallel or multi-environment builds using Travis CI’s precision syntax—all with the developer in mind.