Skip to content

Commit 65c0feb

Browse files
committed
doc: add "building node with ninja" guide
PR-URL: #4767 Refs: nodejs/docs#38 Reviewed-By: Bryan English <bryan@bryanenglish.com> Reviewed-By: Stephan Belanger <admin@stephenbelanger.com>
1 parent 10f55b0 commit 65c0feb

File tree

1 file changed

+39
-0
lines changed

1 file changed

+39
-0
lines changed
Lines changed: 39 additions & 0 deletions
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
1+
# Building Node with Ninja
2+
3+
The purpose of this guide is to show how to build Node.js using [Ninja][], as doing so can be significantly quicker than using `make`. Please see [Ninja's site][Ninja] for installation instructions (unix only).
4+
5+
To build Node with ninja, there are 4 steps that must be taken:
6+
7+
1. Configure the project's OS-based build rules via `./configure` as usual.
8+
2. Use `tools/gyp_node.py -f ninja` to produce Ninja-buildable `gyp` output.
9+
3. Run `ninja -C out/Release` to produce a compiled release binary.
10+
4. Lastly, make symlink to `./node` using `ln -fs out/Release/node node`.
11+
12+
When running `ninja -C out/Release` you will see output similar to the following if the build has succeeded:
13+
```
14+
ninja: Entering directory `out/Release`
15+
[4/4] LINK node, POSTBUILDS
16+
```
17+
18+
The bottom line will change while building, showing the progress as `[finished/total]` build steps.
19+
This is useful output that `make` does not produce and is one of the benefits of using Ninja.
20+
Also, Ninja will likely compile much faster than even `make -j8` (or `-j<number of processor threads on your machine>`).
21+
22+
## Considerations
23+
24+
Ninja builds vary slightly from `make` builds. If you wish to run `make test` after, `make` will likely still need to rebuild some amount of Node.
25+
26+
As such, if you wish to run the tests, it can be helpful to invoke the test runner directly, like so:
27+
`tools/test.py --mode=release message parallel sequential -J`
28+
29+
## Alias
30+
31+
`alias nnode='./configure && tools/gyp_node.py -f ninja && ninja -C out/Release && ln -fs out/Release/node node'`
32+
33+
## Producing a debug build
34+
35+
The above alias can be modified slightly to produce a debug build, rather than a release build as shown below:
36+
`alias nnodedebug='./configure && tools/gyp_node.py -f ninja && ninja -C out/Debug && ln -fs out/Debug/node node_g'`
37+
38+
39+
[Ninja]: https://martine.github.io/ninja/

0 commit comments

Comments
 (0)