Feature Request: Include ninja

[particleflux]

Describe the Feature Request
Include ninja build system in the cimg/android variants.

Is your feature request related to a particular problem?
There's some packages switching from cmake to ninja build system, and it's probably getting more projects using it in the future.

See: for example: software-mansion/react-native-reanimated#5498

How will this feature request benefit CircleCI jobs using this image?

• job speedup for those with manually installed ninja
• can run on linux docker images instead of the machine executor of Mac (see issue linked above)

Describe alternatives you have considered

• manually installing it on each run, e.g. this: Android Build failed with react-native-reanimated:configureCMakeRelWithDebInfo[arm64-v8a] on CircleCI under latest Reactnative 0.73.0. software-mansion/react-native-reanimated#5498 (comment)
• building a custom image
• switching to MacOS machine executor

[menttys]

Any updates here? 🙏

[HaleyWardo]

Any updates here? 🙏

Running into the same issue with RN and react-native-reanimated. Wondering if there are any updates as well.

[anhkieet]

Any updates here? I am facing the same issue

[jbarbe-hozana]

Facing the same issue here

[jpsierens88]

I am getting

[RUN_GRADLEW] Execution failed for task ':shopify_react-native-skia:configureCMakeRelWithDebInfo[arm64-v8a]'.
[RUN_GRADLEW] >
[RUN_GRADLEW] [CXX1416] Could not find Ninja on PATH or in SDK CMake bin folders.

using cimg/android:2024.01.1-browsers

[SuperBesse]

Hello, any news concerning this issue ?
On my side:

• What went wrong:
  Execution failed for task ':react-native-reanimated:configureCMakeRelWithDebInfo[arm64-v8a]'.
  [CXX1416] Could not find Ninja on PATH or in SDK CMake bin folders.

[Asad-wego]

I encountered an error while updating my React Native project from version 0.72.x to 0.74.3. The project configuration includes:

React Native: 0.74.3
React Native Reanimated: ^3.14.0
Gradle: Updated from 7.5 to 8.7
Build Tool: Fastlane
CI Environment: CircleCI
Docker Image: cimg/android:2023.08.1-node
Problem
The project works fine on my local machine in development mode, and I can generate builds using Fastlane on my machine without any issues. However, when running the build job on CircleCI using
bundle exec fastlane staging I encounter the following error:

> Task :react-native-reanimated:configureCMakeRelWithDebInfo[arm64-v8a] FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':react-native-reanimated:configureCMakeRelWithDebInfo[arm64-v8a]'.
> [CXX1416] Could not find Ninja on PATH or in SDK CMake bin folders.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue or found a solution for this? Any steps or suggestions to fix this would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!

[donaldCull]

I got this issue as well but slightly different error with Expo.

image: cimg/android:2024.08-node
react-native: "0.74.5",
expo: "~51.0.28",

[RUN_GRADLEW] FAILURE: Build failed with an exception. [RUN_GRADLEW] * What went wrong: [RUN_GRADLEW] Execution failed for task ':expo-modules-core:configureCMakeRelWithDebInfo[arm64-v8a]'. [RUN_GRADLEW] > [CXX1416] Could not find Ninja on PATH or in SDK CMake bin folders.

I managed to fix it by using the android machine image instead https://circleci.com/developer/machine/image/android. Hope this helps.