The file 'build.ninja' is missing

Anki Desktop
1

I tried to ./run the anki, but fails with the following error:

~/ $ git clone https://github.com/ankitects/anki.git
~/ $ cd anki
~/anki (main)$ git checkout refs/tags/24.04.1
~/anki ((24.04.1))$ ./run
    ...
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 0.19s
thread 'main' panicked at build/runner/src/build.rs:82:39:
ninja not installed: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace
~/anki ((24.04.1))$ ninja
ninja: error: loading 'build.ninja': No such file or directory

It seems the ninja command has failed to find the build.ninja file. How to find or generate it?

2

Have you tried with n2 instead? Do commands like ./ninja check work?

I really don’t know, just throwing out some ideas.

3

Thanks. I tried, but it also requires build.ninja.

$ n2 check
n2: error: read build.ninja: No such file or directory (os error 2)
4

What OS are you on?

For what it’s worth, none of n2 check, ./n2 check or ninja check work for me either, only ./ninja check

5

I use Ubuntu 22.04. Could you run the following to locate build.ninja in your environment?

$ find . -name 'build.ninja'
6

You must use ./ninja or ./run. The error in your original post implies that the ninja or n2 binary is not in the PATH when running bash, which is what ./ninja / ./run uses.

7

Hmm. ./ninja is available but fails with the same error. I also explicitly added the source directory to $PATH, but it does not help.

$ ./ninja 
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 0.14s
thread 'main' panicked at build/runner/src/build.rs:78:39:
ninja not installed: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace
8

It’s the system ninja binary that needs to be on the bash PATH.

9

It is on the PATH.

$ whereis ninja
ninja: /usr/bin/ninja /usr/share/man/man1/ninja.1.gz
$ ninja
ninja: error: loading 'build.ninja': No such file or directory
10

You’ll need to poke around run_build and figure out why the PATH used there doesn’t include ninja on your machine.

11

I inspected the environment variables of running ./run process and confirmed that /usr/bin is specified in PATH.