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Once you start caring about cross-platform, incremental, distributed builds with a bunch of people committing to a monorepo those advanced features start becomi

by qppo 6y ago

Once you start caring about cross-platform, incremental, distributed builds with a bunch of people committing to a monorepo those advanced features start becoming attractive. Shell scripts handle the 'run this build/test task' but not 'pull these artifacts from another set of tasks, run this task to produce a bunch more artifacts, cache them for later.' In these scenarios the lines between build system, package manager, and task runner all become pretty blurred. Haven't found an all in one solution that I would call "portable" yet.

emptysea 6y ago
Sounds like your describing what I like to call a fancy build system Something like Bazel[0], Buck[1] Pants[2], etc. One of their main features is robust caching of build artifacts, which is helpful for larger projects. But they require some major investment compared to your typical `scripts/build.sh`. [0]: https://bazel.build https://bazel.build [1]: https://buck.build https://buck.build [2]: https://www.pantsbuild.org https://www.pantsbuild.org
- qppo 6y ago
  I have a lot of ideas (or rather, one idea) about how to fix my CI problems and "fancy build system" is pretty apt. Bazel is the closest thing I've seen to what I want.
- brabel 6y ago
  Gradle can also do everything imaginable, we've managed to get rid of basically all our horrible bash scripts and wrote most build stuff using Gradle API and using a proper programming language (put actual code in Gradle's buildSrc/, only configure it in build.gradle, and you've got a extremely powerful build).
  - moonbug 6y ago
    sweet summer child.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Shebangs are also your friend, if your primary language can be used that way. The cons of that solution are that there’s a tendency to make them ornate, and the trap of circular dependencies. Reusing an internal library in your build scripts, you have it building itself which can get out of hand quickly.

by qppo 6y ago

emptysea 6y ago

Sounds like your describing what I like to call a fancy build system Something like Bazel[0], Buck[1] Pants[2], etc. One of their main features is robust caching of build artifacts, which is helpful for larger projects. But they require some major investment compared to your typical `scripts/build.sh`. [0]: https://bazel.build https://bazel.build [1]: https://buck.build https://buck.build [2]: https://www.pantsbuild.org https://www.pantsbuild.org

qppo 6y ago
I have a lot of ideas (or rather, one idea) about how to fix my CI problems and "fancy build system" is pretty apt. Bazel is the closest thing I've seen to what I want.
brabel 6y ago
Gradle can also do everything imaginable, we've managed to get rid of basically all our horrible bash scripts and wrote most build stuff using Gradle API and using a proper programming language (put actual code in Gradle's buildSrc/, only configure it in build.gradle, and you've got a extremely powerful build).
- moonbug 6y ago
  sweet summer child.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Shebangs are also your friend, if your primary language can be used that way. The cons of that solution are that there’s a tendency to make them ornate, and the trap of circular dependencies. Reusing an internal library in your build scripts, you have it building itself which can get out of hand quickly.