6 ms·

Unfortunately, for us, Java “out of memory” errors are routine, and for even moderately-sized monorepos the RAM requirements can get insane.

dleslie 6y ago
Precisely this. Advocating for Java as a general purpose tool language sort of overlooks the incredibly broad and prevasive installbase of machines more than ten years old, as well as the rapidly growing installbase of ARM SOC machines. For many, a tool eating up a gigabyte or more of memory is certainly not acceptable.
- gerash 6y ago
  I'm lost. Can't people build their binaries on a powerful machine instead of an ARM tablet?
  - dleslie 6y ago
    Not everyone has a powerful machine to do so with; many folks are still using computers that shipped with WinXP, or even Vista or 98/Me. It's a huge world outside of California. Personally, my primary home/non-work machines are an RPi4 and a Pinebook Pro.
    - orf 6y ago
      So Google should ship a potentially inferior tool, slower, because some people run on inappropriate or highly outdated hardware? Hmm.
      - brmgb 6y ago
        No, Bazel just fails to satisfy the very real need of building on less powerful machines because of its technological choice, a need served by other tools competing with it, and therefore is not really a truly general, one size fit all, solution. The fact that you personally deem the needs of others illegitimate doesn't preclude them from actually existing.
      - dleslie 6y ago
        The topic is whether FOSS developers should use Bazel, not whether Bazel is good for Google. For many it is Bazel that is inferior due to development environment constraints. And "outdated" is a questionable term: if it satisfies their needs, why upgrade? Maybe Google should build better tools.
    - oblio 6y ago
      I think you're part of a minority, though. You're talking about computers from 20, 20+ years ago and about Raspberry Pi. It's a personal choice. You can get a good second hand desktop from 2012-2015 for the price of your Raspberry Pi.
      - dleslie 6y ago
        Travel to Africa, India and South East Asia some time. The world is a big place outside of California, and the hardware available to many is not what you'll find at a cafe in San Francisco.
        gerash 6y ago
        I've lived in other less developed countries and it's not like a raspberry Pi is the most people can afford there. Have you lived in the places you've listed?
        dleslie 6y ago
        The RPi is an example of a growing SOC device market, but I did mention as well the enormous install base of older and under-powered devices in general. I have family in Colombia.
        oblio 6y ago
        I don't live in California (nor the US), I've only visited twice or so. I'm from a place similar to those you're describing. Few people would get enthusiast gear like Raspberry Pi. What they would get, instead, would be an old x86 PC with pirated Windows. A crummy knock off Chinese laptop or locally assembled PC (so not from the big OEMs).
        dleslie 6y ago
        It seems we agree, then? Those devices you mention would be in the category of older, lower-power machines that I mentioned.
jsolson 6y ago
I'm curious what you consider "insane" to be -- and I mean this genuinely. Google has what I think most would consider to be a large monorepo, but also provides developer desktops with ample RAM. I've noticed blaze's startup time, but never really thought about its memory consumption. Where are you running into limits?
- smiths1999 6y ago
  Doesn't blaze build remotely via citc? I thought files were loaded locally for editing but built remotely.
  - jsolson 6y ago
    Blaze itself runs locally, reading BUILD files from citc. The build actions mostly execute remotely.
- an_d_rew 6y ago
  10,000+ artifacts on a 20 core Intel box with 64 Gb RAM. We have some peculiarities of our Bazel setup that are not common, yet are (supposed to be) fully supported. Building can take hours.
  - laurentlb 6y ago
    Are you using remote execution with Bazel? If you have hour long builds, it's often worth investing in remote execution (just remote caching can help too).

dleslie 6y ago

Precisely this. Advocating for Java as a general purpose tool language sort of overlooks the incredibly broad and prevasive installbase of machines more than ten years old, as well as the rapidly growing installbase of ARM SOC machines. For many, a tool eating up a gigabyte or more of memory is certainly not acceptable.

gerash 6y ago
I'm lost. Can't people build their binaries on a powerful machine instead of an ARM tablet?
- dleslie 6y ago
  Not everyone has a powerful machine to do so with; many folks are still using computers that shipped with WinXP, or even Vista or 98/Me. It's a huge world outside of California. Personally, my primary home/non-work machines are an RPi4 and a Pinebook Pro.
  - orf 6y ago
    So Google should ship a potentially inferior tool, slower, because some people run on inappropriate or highly outdated hardware? Hmm.
    - brmgb 6y ago
      No, Bazel just fails to satisfy the very real need of building on less powerful machines because of its technological choice, a need served by other tools competing with it, and therefore is not really a truly general, one size fit all, solution. The fact that you personally deem the needs of others illegitimate doesn't preclude them from actually existing.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      The topic is whether FOSS developers should use Bazel, not whether Bazel is good for Google. For many it is Bazel that is inferior due to development environment constraints. And "outdated" is a questionable term: if it satisfies their needs, why upgrade? Maybe Google should build better tools.
  - oblio 6y ago
    I think you're part of a minority, though. You're talking about computers from 20, 20+ years ago and about Raspberry Pi. It's a personal choice. You can get a good second hand desktop from 2012-2015 for the price of your Raspberry Pi.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      Travel to Africa, India and South East Asia some time. The world is a big place outside of California, and the hardware available to many is not what you'll find at a cafe in San Francisco.
      - gerash 6y ago
        I've lived in other less developed countries and it's not like a raspberry Pi is the most people can afford there. Have you lived in the places you've listed?
        dleslie 6y ago
        The RPi is an example of a growing SOC device market, but I did mention as well the enormous install base of older and under-powered devices in general. I have family in Colombia.
      - oblio 6y ago
        I don't live in California (nor the US), I've only visited twice or so. I'm from a place similar to those you're describing. Few people would get enthusiast gear like Raspberry Pi. What they would get, instead, would be an old x86 PC with pirated Windows. A crummy knock off Chinese laptop or locally assembled PC (so not from the big OEMs).
        dleslie 6y ago
        It seems we agree, then? Those devices you mention would be in the category of older, lower-power machines that I mentioned.

jsolson 6y ago

I'm curious what you consider "insane" to be -- and I mean this genuinely. Google has what I think most would consider to be a large monorepo, but also provides developer desktops with ample RAM. I've noticed blaze's startup time, but never really thought about its memory consumption. Where are you running into limits?

smiths1999 6y ago
Doesn't blaze build remotely via citc? I thought files were loaded locally for editing but built remotely.
- jsolson 6y ago
  Blaze itself runs locally, reading BUILD files from citc. The build actions mostly execute remotely.
an_d_rew 6y ago
10,000+ artifacts on a 20 core Intel box with 64 Gb RAM. We have some peculiarities of our Bazel setup that are not common, yet are (supposed to be) fully supported. Building can take hours.
- laurentlb 6y ago
  Are you using remote execution with Bazel? If you have hour long builds, it's often worth investing in remote execution (just remote caching can help too).