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I don’t think anyone is claiming that Bazel is “the same thing” as distcc. But they both solve the problem of distributed builds.

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But unless you're already using Bazel, it's impractical to suggest "just use Bazel to distribute your builds" as doing so requires that you first migrate your build to Bazel. distcc, as noted, can be applied to an existing build regardless of the build tool used.

So, you’re saying that it’s impractical to switch build systems, and that it’s inappropriate to suggest alternative build systems?

I think that if you’re reading a suggestion to “just use X” on Hacker News, the sensible thing to do is to evaluate the suggestion for your own. You don’t need to put a long list of caveats in front of every software recommendation. If your problem is, “My builds are slow, I want distributed builds,” then you should probably at least consider the two most popular solutions to that problem, which are Bazel and Distcc. Both with their drawbacks.

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