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Never heard of bld before, but my read is that they were overwhelmed by the complexity of existing tools, and wanted one with minimal frills that doesn't get in
by the_af 2y ago
Never heard of bld before, but my read is that they were overwhelmed by the complexity of existing tools, and wanted one with minimal frills that doesn't get in the way and which looks like app code (as opposed to using a declarative language), so they wrote one. I suppose they wanted to "get it over with"... whether this is a pipe dream or not remains to be seen ;)
- Tainnor 2y agoBuild tools are complex because builds are complex. Of course, if you create a bespoke tool for your specific use case and then a bunch of other people use it but it doesn't really gain widespread adoption, you can keep stuff simple. I'm not saying that there's not accidental complexity in current build tools and that a new build tool couldn't strike the balance better, but a rarely used build tool being simple doesn't really say much (and this much is true for almost any kind of software).
- the_af 2y agoI'm not disputing anything you say, but my comment was aimed at explaining why someone who doesn't like dealing with build tools would want to write one. I don't want to have to defend their choice or explain why build tools are often complex and cumbersome.
- dvzk 2y agoSadly there's tons of code-based Java build tools, but possibly zero concise (toml/yaml- like) declarative build tools. If you're currently using Groovy or Kotlin scripts for building Java projects however, then Java build scripts are appealing.