The newest binary version of ninja doesn't support for Windows XP.

[lygstate]

Make sure the subsystem to be 5.01

[nico]

What exactly is broken, and what do I need to change to fix that? What's the last version that works on XP?

[lygstate]

XP would report error about invalid executable

[gavanderhoorn]

I've had to use ninja on a Windows XP system recently and had to go back to version 1.6.0 for it t work. More recent builds seem to have the subsystem set to a value > 5.01 which isn't XP compatible.

Not sure how much you want to accomodate us poor sods that have to deal with XP, but for my own builds I have to add /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS,"5.01" to my CMake linker flags to get things going again.

See C/C++ Building Reference > Linking > Linker Options - /SUBSYSTEM (Specify Subsystem) for some info on subsystem.

[AS383]

On ReactOS I have the same problem: BAD_EXE_FORMAT. If I compile Ninja from source it's binary is large (~5 Mb).

[jhasse]

Since there haven't been updates to XP since June 2017, I think it's okay if the latest Ninja doesn't work there. Please use 1.6 or compile from source if you need it.