Faster Than Ninja

A performance benchmark comparing build2, a native C++ build system, against Ninja using Xerces-C++ (299 translation units) as the test project. Out of the box, build2 is about 11% slower than Ninja (3.8s vs 3.4s), but after disabling two features — precise change tracking via checksum tokenization and file cache compression — build2 matches and then slightly exceeds Ninja's speed at 3.355s. The post explains three architectural reasons build2 can compete: aggressive caching of discovered information, multi-threaded housekeeping (vs Ninja's single-threaded approach), and a front-loaded preprocess-then-compile model that improves file cache locality and reduces memory pressure. Notably, CMake's generation step adds 15.6s on top of Ninja's 3.4s, making the real-world comparison far less flattering for the CMake+Ninja combo.

Source: https://build2.org/blog/faster-than-ninja.xhtml. 8sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.