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Comment by bartvk | Hacker News Reader

So what language do you build with it? And why was it better than the traditional build system of that language?

I've used it for Python, C, and some Go. The huge benifit of bazel-like build systems isn't that it's better then a languages build system, it's that it's the best every language build system.

It's consistent between all languages and supports a lot of functionality. For example the proto_library and grpc_library rules make building microservices extremely easy. You can build an entire service in like 3 lines of boilerplate.

It also makes it easy to do cross-language deps. For example a c library included into a Java library that uses native bindings to wrap it.

Plz is great for c++, and has a better workflow (IMO) vs (e.g) Cmake. The skylark-like syntax is easier to reason through than cmake generative expressions. Also the use of “plz run” vs “cmake -g; make; run”

cmake generator only needs to be run once per project. After that you use make or ninja directly, and it regenerates the build files if necessary. I can't say it's a strong argument against cmake.

This added user complexity is exactly the argument for plz, though. One of the ideas touted is (to my mind) tight integration, in that plz knows how to handle everything. Whereas cmake just makes project files and leaves it at that.

Are build tools targeted at end-users? Cmake is better for me, the developer, the person who has to build the software

Sadly this doesn’t always work. I have lost loads of time trying to figure this out then doing a clean rebuild.

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