mkninja is like CMake or Meson in that it is a metabuild system that generates a build system. mkninja is also like Tup or ninja itself in that it is 100% language agnostic.

You might want to use mkninja for the following reasons:

• You are in a project that needs a wrapper build system around several unrelated sub-build systems (often in a cross-language tech stack).
• You want to execute a large number of arbitrary actions in a build graph (perhaps treating a server configuration as a build system problem).
• You don't like alternative build tools and you want something with an easy learning curve.

You might decide not to use mkninja for the following reasons:

• You are building a single-language project where some existing build system has tons of great tooling for you to leverage (such as C++ and CMake).
• You want something that is polished while mkninja is still experimental.

You can install mkninja via pip:

pip install mkninja

mkninja is close in spirit to CMake. Instead of using CMakeLists.txt and writing in CMake script, you use mkninja.py files and you write normal python.

You generate the ninja files once with:

cd /path/to/build && mkninja /path/to/src

After initial configuration, mkninja will automatically regenerate its build.ninja files any time you run ninja and any of the mkninja.py files have been updated, much like CMake or Meson.

When mkninja runs, it imports the top-level mkninja.py of your project as the special module name root. If you have another mkninja.py in a subdirectory like tools/mkninja.py you may import it with import root.tools and use it as you would normally use a python module.

Note that only the mkninja.py in the root directory is automatically imported. Any subdirectories containing mkninja.py files must be need to be explicitly imported to take effect.

Every mkninja.py file has access to the following special values (without importing anything):

• SRC
• BLD
• add_target()
• add_manifest()
• add_glob()

SRC is a pathlib.Path object pointing to source directory in which that mkninja.py file exists. Think ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}.

BLD is a pathlib.Path object pointing to the directory corresponding to SRC but in the build tree. Think ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BULID_DIR}.

add_target() adds a new target (or "build edge" in ninja terminology) to the generated build.ninja file. add_target() has the following keyword-only arguments:

• command: a list of tokens as to how the command should run. You are allowed to provide a single string, which will be first tokenized via shlex.split().
• outputs: a list of output files that the command should generate.
• inputs: a list of input files or mkninja.Target objects that the command depends on.
• after: a list of order-only dependencies of the target. Items may be output files from another mkninja.Target or another mkninja.Target object itself.
• phony: a boolean indicating that the target should always be considered out-of-date. Note that make has the obnoxious behavior that any target that depends on a PHONY target is also always considered out-of-date. The same is not true under mkninja.py.
• workdir: a directory to cd into before launching the command, defaults to SRC.
• display: a string of text to display while this step is running.
• default: a bool to indicate if this target should be run by default (defaults to True).
• dyndep: a file or target (which must also be in inputs) that ninja should treat as a dynamic dependency file. See ninja docs for details.
• stamp: if True, the first provided output will be created or modified with touch (or windows equivalent) after command runs successfully.

add_target() returns a mkninja.Target object which has attributes inputs, outputs, and after which may be useful to read (but which probably shouldn't be modified). Additionally, the mkninja.Target object may be passed into inputs or after directly.

add_alias() adds a new target that is an alias for one or more other targets. It can be used to expose one target in a more convenient namespace, or to group multiple targets under a single umbrella. add_target() has the following arguments:

• name: the name of the alias target to create.
• inputs: a list of input files or mkninja.Target objects.
• default (keyword-only): a bool to indicate if this target should be run by default (defaults to True).

add_alias() returns a mkninja.Target object.

add_manifest() adds a target to track a dynamic list of files. The command argument should write a list of files, one per line, to stdout. Each time this target runs, the command is run and piped to the manifest binary (packaged with mkninja). manifest will ensure that the out file contains an up-to-date list of files and that the out file is always newer than any of the files in the list. In this way, another target which depends on the out file can be thought of as depending on the entire list of files; it will be rebuilt any time that the list of files changes, or any time that a file in the list is modified.

add_manifest() has the following keyword-only arguments:

• command: the command to generate the stdin to the manifest binary. As with add_target(), command may be either a list of tokens or a single string.
• out: the output file to be generated by the manifest file.
• after: a list of order-only dependencies before building the manifest
• workdir: a directory to cd into before launching the command, defaults to SRC.

add_manifest() returns a mkninja.Target.

add_glob() adds a new target which uses the findglob binary (packaged with mkninja) to search for files matching the patterns provided as arguments. The result is piped into the manifest binary (described above), so that another target which depends on the output of add_glob() will effectively depend on all the files matching the patterns provided. add_glob() has the following arguments:

• *patterns: a list of patterns to pass as command-line arguments to the findglob binary. You might use "*.c" to list all of the .c files in the current directory, or "**/*.c" to list all of the .c files in the directory tree rooted at .. See the full output of findglob --help below for more details about patterns.
• out: where to write the manifest file to
• after: a list of order-only dependencies before searching for files
• workdir: a diretory to cd into before launching findglob, defaults to SRC.

add_glob() returns a mkninja.Target.

findglob is what runs in the ninja build edge created by add_glob() and so knowing how it works will help you choose patterns for add_glob().

findglob will find matching files and directories and write them to stdout.

usage: findglob PATTERN... [ANTIPATERN...]

examples:

    # find all .c files below a directory
    findglob '**/*.c'

    # find all .c AND .h files below a directory
    findglob '**/*.c' '**/*.h'

    # find all .c AND .h files below a directory, while avoid searching
    # through the .git directory
    findglob '**/*.c' '**/*.h' '!.git'

    # find all .py files below a directory, while avoid searching through
    # the git directory or any __pycache__ directories
    findglob '**/*.py' '!.git' '!**/__pycache__'

    # find all .c files below a directory but ignore any .in.c files
    findglob '**/*.c' '!**/*.in.c'

Some details of how patterns work:

  - a PATTERN starting with ** will begin searching in $PWD

  - a PATTERN starting with prefix/** will begin searching at prefix/

  - PATTERNs of a/** and b/** will search a/ and b/ in sequence

  - PATTERNs of **/a and **/b will search $PWD once for files named a or b,
    because they have the same start point ($PWD)

  - PATTERNs of a/** and a/b/** will search a/ once, since the start point
    of the first pattern is a parent of the start point of the second

  - PATTERNs ending with a file separator ('/') will only match directories

  - ANTIPATTERNs start with a '!', and cause matching files to not be
    printed and matching directories to not be searched

  - ANTIPATTERNs follow the same startpoint rules, so !**/.git will prevent
    matching anything beneath $PWD named .git, while !/**/.git, which has a
    start point of / will prevent matching anything named .git across the
    entire filesystem.  Unlike PATTERNs, an ANTIPATTERN with a start point
    of '/' is not enough to cause findglob to search through all of '/'.

  - PATTERNs and ANTIPATTERNs may have types.  Presently only dir-types and
    file-types (really, non-dir-types) exist.  Dir-type patterns will match
    directories but not files, file-types will match files but not dirs,
    and untyped patterns will match either.  Dir-type patterns may be
    specified with a trailing file separator (/).  File-type patterns must
    be specified with the extended syntax.

  - on Windows, using '\' as a separator is not allowed; use '/' instead

Extended syntax:

  - Extended-syntax patterns begin with a ':', followed by zero or more
    flags, followed by another ':', followed by the pattern.  The following
    flags are currently supported:

      - ! -> an ANTIPATTERN
      - f -> match against files
      - d -> match against directories
      - if no type flag is supplied, it matches all types

   Example:
       # find files (not dirs) named 'build' except those in build dirs:
       findglob ':f:**/build' ':!d:**/build'