GitLab CI¶

rninja drops into a GitLab CI pipeline anywhere ninja would be used. The two common patterns are per-job cache and shared rninja-cached service.

Per-job cache pattern¶

GitLab's cache: keyword persists the rninja cache directory across runs:

.gitlab-ci.yml

build:
  image: rust:1.75
  variables:
    RNINJA_CACHE_ENABLED: "1"
    RNINJA_CACHE_MODE: local
    RNINJA_CACHE_DIR: "$CI_PROJECT_DIR/.rninja-cache"
  cache:
    key:
      files:
        - build.ninja
        - CMakeLists.txt
    paths:
      - .rninja-cache/
  before_script:
    - cargo install rninja
  script:
    - cmake -G Ninja -B build
    - rninja -C build --no-daemon

Pointing RNINJA_CACHE_DIR inside $CI_PROJECT_DIR is what lets GitLab's cache keyword see it - the default ~/.cache/rninja lives outside the project tree.

--no-daemon is the right default in CI: runners are short-lived, so there's no warm daemon to amortize startup against.

Shared cache service¶

Adapted from the root deployment guide (docs/remote-cache-deployment.md):

.gitlab-ci.yml

build:
  image: rust:1.75
  services:
    - name: rninja/cached:latest
      alias: cache
  variables:
    RNINJA_CACHE_HOST: cache
    RNINJA_CACHE_PORT: "9999"
    RNINJA_REMOTE_URL: tcp://cache:9999
    RNINJA_CACHE_MODE: remote
  before_script:
    - cargo install rninja
  script:
    - cmake -G Ninja -B build
    - rninja -C build --no-daemon

For a long-lived shared cache (recommended for teams), deploy rninja-cached on your own infrastructure and point RNINJA_REMOTE_URL at the public address instead of an inline service.

Symlinking as `ninja`¶

If the rest of your pipeline already calls ninja, alias it so you don't have to touch every step:

before_script:
  - cargo install rninja
  - ln -sf "$(which rninja)" /usr/local/bin/ninja

Parallel jobs¶

GitLab's parallel: maps nicely onto rninja's per-job cache - each instance gets the same cache key, so they share artifacts.

build:
  parallel: 4
  cache:
    key: rninja-shared
    paths:
      - .rninja-cache/
  script:
    - rninja -C build --no-daemon

Stats and verbosity¶

Use -d stats (a built-in debug mode, see src/cli.rs) to surface cache hit/miss counts in the job log, or -v for full command lines.

script:
  - rninja -C build --no-daemon -d stats