I don't think it is meant to replace any particular build system like Bazel or make. Rather it is a better dependency glue flavor for Docker image building and

I don't think it is meant to replace any particular build system like Bazel or make. Rather it is a better dependency glue flavor for Docker image building and testing. Earthly uses Makefile-like targets which can be leveraged through more advanced references [0]... essentially can replace plain "copy --from=" with a new magic strings syntax which also understand git. Build systems like Bazel would be invoked within a container. I don't think the "why" using it instead of Bazel (and its plugins) will become clear until the Earthly SaaS gets announced that is hinted about in their TOS [1]. Build resource pool management, image release management, testing/dev environment definitions, custom URLs to test pull requests as seen elsewhere? Arguably one could say they'd probably be able do the same thing by writing some Skylark and use remote build execution, but that could be close to saying Dropbox wasn't special in a Show HN thread. :-) [0] https://docs.earthly.dev/docs/guides/target-ref https://docs.earthly.dev/docs/guides/target-ref [1] https://earthly.dev/tos https://earthly.dev/tos