HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
pdtpartners
nix-ninja
Rust2025–2026
pdtpartners / nix-ninja

nix-ninja

Ninja-compatible incremental build system for Nix

Developer ToolsSystems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
2Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
271GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Ninja-compatible incremental build system for Nix

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month3 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2025-04-03 10:47:11 UTC to 2026-08-06 06:57:24 UTC.

0122025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 commentsApr 20252025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsDec 20252026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsAug 2026

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Apr 20252025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC211
May 20252025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20252025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20252025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20252025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20252025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20252025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20262026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20262026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20262026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20262026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20262026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20262026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20262026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

3 sources
majoe·Aug 6, 2026
I stumbled upon the very experimental nix-ninja [0] recently. They seem to create a dynamic nix derivation per compilation unit, which would be very similar to what you describe as manifests in your post as it also creates a hash of all inputs. Would be interesting to here your opinion on that approach [0]: https://github.com/pdtpartners/nix-ninja
In Faster Than Ninja
hinshun·Apr 3, 2025Submission

Show HN: Nix Ninja – open-source Ninja-compatible build system for Nix

Hello, this is Edgar! We are open sourcing nix-ninja, an incremental build system for Nix that leverages dynamic derivations. For those unfamiliar, Nix is a powerful package manager and build system that ensures reproducible builds via strict dependency isolation. However, one of its limitations has been that it builds packages as monolithic units - if you change one source file, Nix rebuilds the entire package from scratch. nix-ninja solves this by bringing compilation unit level granularity to Nix builds. It targets ninja build files, a format for describing build graphs output by popular build systems like CMake and meson. This means that when you modify a single source file, only the affected compilation units need to be rebuilt, significantly reducing build times. We're excited because this gives Nix fine-grained caching with early c
Read the rest
utoff optimisation (see the Build Systems à la Carte paper). Combined with remote build farms like Nixbuild.net, this moves Nix into the incremental cloud build systems arena, alongside Google's Bazel and Meta's Buck2. Dynamic derivations and content-addressed derivations are still experimental features in Nix, so we're hoping to accelerate their maturation by providing a compelling use-case and implementation. Our north star is to have Hydra (nixpkgs' CI runner) support incremental compilation in nixpkgs for slow builds like LLVM. nix-ninja can compile Nix itself today, but we're still very early in its development. Given community interest in dynamic derivations and incremental compilation in Nix, we decided to open source it in an pre-alpha state to involve the community in its design. Please take a look. We'll be available in the comments to answer any questions: https://github.com/pdtpartners/nix-ninja
33 points · Open discussion

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.