ezyang's blog

the arc of software bends towards understanding

2015/12

The convergence of compilers, build systems and package managers

Abstract. The traditional abstraction barriers between compiler, build system and package manager are increasingly ill-suited for IDEs, parallel build systems, and modern source code organization. Recent compilers like go and rustc are equipped with a fully-fledged build systems; semantic build systems like Bazel and Gradle also expect to manage the packaging of software. Does this mean we should jettison these abstraction barriers? It seems worthwhile to look for new interfaces which can accommodate these use-cases.

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