ninja VS Winterbloom_Castor_and_Pollux

Under the hood, Rescript uses a build system called Ninja. Ninja is similar to Make, but cross-platform and more minimal/performant.

Really? I thought most new projects were switching to ninja[^1] and have never used it.

[^1]: https://ninja-build.org/

warning: Starting with the September 2023 release, the default triplet for vcpkg libraries will change from x86-windows to the detected host triplet (x64-windows). To resolve this message, add --triplet x86-windows to keep the same behavior. Computing installation plan... The following packages will be built and installed: * egl-registry:x86-windows -> 2022-09-20 glew:x86-windows -> 2.2.0#3 * opengl:x86-windows -> 2022-12-04#3 * opengl-registry:x86-windows -> 2022-09-29#1 * vcpkg-cmake:x64-windows -> 2023-05-04 * vcpkg-cmake-config:x64-windows -> 2022-02-06#1 Additional packages (*) will be modified to complete this operation. Detecting compiler hash for triplet x86-windows... A suitable version of powershell-core was not found (required v7.2.11) Downloading portable powershell-core 7.2.11... Downloading powershell-core... https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.2.11/PowerShell-7.2.11-win-x86.zip->C:\vcpkg\downloads\PowerShell-7.2.11-win-x86.zip Downloading https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.2.11/PowerShell-7.2.11-win-x86.zip Extracting powershell-core... error: while detecting compiler information: The log file content at "C:\vcpkg\buildtrees\detect_compiler\stdout-x86-windows.log" is: -- Downloading https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/releases/download/v1.10.2/ninja-win.zip -> ninja-win-1.10.2.zip... -- Configuring x86-windows CMake Error at scripts/cmake/vcpkg_execute_required_process.cmake:112 (message): Command failed: C:/vcpkg/downloads/tools/ninja/1.10.2-windows/ninja.exe -v Working Directory: C:/vcpkg/buildtrees/detect_compiler/x86-windows-rel/vcpkg-parallel-configure Error code: 1 See logs for more information: C:\vcpkg\buildtrees\detect_compiler\config-x86-windows-rel-CMakeCache.txt.log C:\vcpkg\buildtrees\detect_compiler\config-x86-windows-out.log

I thought I would share my custom installer script for the latest GitHub versions of CMake, Ninja, and Meson.

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.

There are also some other tools like https://ninja-build.org/ that you might prefer using instead

I got Ninja from https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja, latest release. I'm assuming this is a false positive?

Oh excellent, then better (and more portable!) tools are available:

http://pants.build

https://ninja-build.org

https://buck.build

and, if you hate yourself: https://bazel.build

I'm glad you enjoyed it! We're serious about open source and that means we gotta be serious about documentation. If you want a really fun one, check out https://gemini.wntr.dev ;)

Related - check out "The Most Thoroughly Commented Linker Script" made by our own /u/theacodes: https://github.com/wntrblm/Castor_and_Pollux/blob/main/firmware/scripts/samd21g18a.ld

The Most Thoroughly Commented Linker Script in the World

We use ninja - a very small and fast build system. Ninja generally needs something to generate its build files (CMake, Meson, etc.), but we just use a little Python script to generate ours.

Winterbloom also has something similar with their interactive user guide for Castor & Pollux (their latest Eurorack-format synth module). It's geared towards beginners and explains a lot of things that are useful even if you don't ever plan to get that module or any modular gear at all.

Plus the modules are really cool and unique. Sol and BHB are both programmable with CircuitPython. All the hardware and firmware are open source for all the modules. Thea is also suuuuuper good about documentation too; check out this interactive user guide for Castor & Pollux!

C&P is the latest, and most complex yet, by my favorite indie module maker, Winterbloom. I pre-ordered as soon as it was available to do so and they finally started shipping recently. The manual is pretty sweet and really interactive and educational too. RMR did a really good video demoing the wide range of sounds this can produce; highly recommend checking it out.

Hey there, I wrote some build instructions in the contributing guide on GitHub: https://github.com/wntrblm/Castor_and_Pollux/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#building-the-firmware

This is great! I love a good minimal implementation. If anyone is looking for a complete Juno-style DCO, you might be interested in Castor & Pollux- the module that I wrote that Juno article for. It's also completely open-source, and you can find the schematics and source code here.