Bazel 1.0

Post by ondrasej » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #107

halflings wrote: post #26

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Bazel is almost a standard for build systems at this point. Did you ever use it, or at least see what a bazel build rule looks like [1] before calling it arcane? [1] https://docs.bazel.build/versions/1.0.0/tutorial/cpp.html#un...

Build rules for bazel are straightforward when you’re on the happy path & trying to do something that bazel already understands. It’s when you’re not on the happy path that things get awkward. E.g. How easy is it to integrate a new C++ compiler into bazel? (and I don’t just mean what you get by changing CC to point somewhere else. I want the full integration with the bazel build system in order to get those hermetic…

Post by boris » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

gpderetta wrote: post #110

boris wrote: post #49

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There are alternatives that satisfy this (valid, IMO) requirement. For example, there is build2 ( https://build2.org ; full disclousure: I am involved with the project) that tries to achieve the same objectives (correct & fast builds, uniform interface accross platforms, being language agnostic, etc) though not necessarily using the same mechanisms (build2, for example, tries to be fairly light-weight). Here is the i…

I checked as I was interested, but it seems that build2 doesn't do distributed builds. edit: remote->distributed

Post by pja » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

ondrasej wrote: post #152

pja wrote: post #107

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Build rules for bazel are straightforward when you’re on the happy path & trying to do something that bazel already understands. It’s when you’re not on the happy path that things get awkward. E.g. How easy is it to integrate a new C++ compiler into bazel? (and I don’t just mean what you get by changing CC to point somewhere else. I want the full integration with the bazel build system in order to get those hermetic…

There's genrule() which basically runs a shell script. With that, you can build anything for which you can write a command-line. And you can go as far as invoke a binary that is built by another bazel rule. You can also define your own rules in a subset of Python (by wrapping other rules including genrule()), so adding new languages should be simple enough.

Post by sayrer » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

fanf2 wrote: post #151

sayrer wrote: post #101

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For packages, you download things by specifying an archive (zip file, git repo, etc), and a SHA256 hash. Think of it as extremely-precise version pinning. You can also refer to other Bazel projects and use their internal rules if permitted. The biggest advantages of Bazel over something like CMake are: 1) It is very general, so you can easily express dependencies of this sort: - concat three text files, then - run th…

(1) sounds like table stakes for any build system - `make` has done all that for decades

Post by evmar » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

MapleWalnut wrote: post #143

kartayyar wrote: post #127

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Xoogler here who used the internal version of Bazel ( blaze ) extensively, liked it and now opted to use it for our 2 person startup ( at least for the backend ). You don't need a giant codebase to start benefitting from it. Even if you have a smaller codebase, and properly use bazel to setup tests, you only test what needs testing, and that makes a huge difference in productivity.

What languages are you using with Bazel? I have a project that uses Typescript and Python. Are you using Bazel with interpreted languages?