When comparing Jam vs Ninja, the Slant community recommends Ninja for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source build systems for C/C++?” Ninja is ranked 1st while Jam is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Ninja is:
Once dependencies like maven are installed it is up and running in minutes with one simple command.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Has a central package repository
A central repository provides more guarantees about the availability of the package. With requiring directly from repository urls, the entire project could potentially be taken down on a whim.
Pro Community is focused on client side javascript
Because Jam only manages Javascript and only works on the client side, you have the assurance that any packages listed are AMD compatible for asynchronous loading.
Pro Architecture independent
Jam's only a front-end package manager, the rest of your server can be on a different architecture or framework. No matter what the architecture, Jam will integrate easily with it.
Pro Provides the best AMD compatibility allowing for better asynchronous loading
Jam requires AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition), which means faster package loading, as it can be done asynchronously.
Pro Simple set up
Once dependencies like maven are installed it is up and running in minutes with one simple command.
Pro Easy horizontal scaling
Ninja is stateless by design. This makes horizontal scaling very easy and just a matter of adding servers.
Cons
Con Forced AMD compatibility means fewer libraries
AMD is currently not as popular as CommonJS modules, which means if a library isn't supported, you'll have to deal with it yourself.
Con Little user choice in organization
Since most of the code and folder structure are automatically generated, this leaves little room to the developer on how they will organize their project.