Understanding Build Systems: A Comprehensive Guide to Software Development Tools
By
todsacerdoti
Pure flour-power. Hearty enough to carry you through lunch.
Summary
This article provides a comprehensive overview of build systems, explaining them as tools that define and execute transformations from input data to output data with memoization through caching. It covers the fundamental concepts of build systems including rules/steps, caching mechanisms, and their role in software development workflows. The article serves as an educational guide to understanding what build systems are and how they function in modern development environments.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledAt a high level, build systems are tools or libraries that provide a way to define and execute a series of transformations from input data to output data that are memoized by caching them in an object store.
Transformations are called steps or rules and define how to execute a task that generates zero or more outputs from zero or more inputs.
A rule is usually the unit of caching; i.e. the cache points are the outputs of a rule, and cache invalidations
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