> It seems to me that all build systems are just DAGs with syntactic sugar and functions. True in the broadest sense, but there are choices to be done regardin

> It seems to me that all build systems are just DAGs with syntactic sugar and functions. True in the broadest sense, but there are choices to be done regarding the possibility of discovering what the graph is or has become on the fly and the propagation directions. See “Build systems à la carte”[1,2] for a systematic exploration. (See also a neighbouring comment[3] re how the discourse structure[4] of the build script might be important in a way orthogonal to these execution-engine issues. The boundary between the build system and the build tool proper can be drawn in very different places here.) [1] https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3236774 https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3236774 [2] https://youtu.be/BQVT6wiwCxM https://youtu.be/BQVT6wiwCxM [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36749885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36749885 [4] https://brenocon.com/blog/2009/09/dont-mawk-awk-the-fastest-and-most-elegant-big-data-munging-language/ https://brenocon.com/blog/2009/09/dont-mawk-awk-the-fastest-...