how does one trigger the rebuild of an editable install without starting Python?

[dimpase]

I looked for a feature to trigger the rebuild of an editable install without actually starting the Python process, but could not find anything like this. I presume it's possible by starting ninja with appropriate parameters, but what exactly should they be?

[dimpase]

It seems that it's just ninja -C <builddir>, but perhaps I am missing something.

[dnicolodi]

Yes, that's everything there is to it. The default build directory for editable installs is build/<python version tag> in the package source directory. <python version tag> is something in the form pyXY where X and Y are the Python major and minor version numbers, respectively, optionally followed by a single character indicating the Python API. The only relevant one nowadays is t for free-threaded Python builds.