Computer freezes / runs out of memory when building SIMSOPT (Linux Mint 21.3, based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)

This is not strictly SIMSOPT related, but I'm putting it on the wiki in case someone runs into a similar problem. I found myself running out of memory when building SIMSOPT using

env CC=cc MPICC=cc python -m pip install -e .[MPI]

Monitoring the output of the terminal running the build command (replace 'pts/0' as appropriate to monitor the correct terminal)

ps -e | grep pts/0

it became apparent that the build process was spawning a ton of 'ninja' processes until my laptop ran out of memory.

Searching for a solution, I found someone with a similar issue at https://github.com/abetlen/llama-cpp-python/discussions/1849 The problem seemed to be their version of ninja, specifically ninja==1.11.1, which was indeed the same version I was running. Downgrading to ninja==1.10.1 solved the problem for me.