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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

I hate Bazel. A build system for C/C++ should not require a Java JVM. Please keep Java out of microcontroller ecosystem please -__--

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We realize Bazel is not the right build system for every embedded project. The "Bazel for Embedded" post that came out today (we co-authored it) talks more about why we find Bazel so compelling: https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html

Bazel is great for some Enterprise. Try it somewhere Azure rules and behold the confused looks everywhere.

In my experience, Bazel is great if you are a Google-sized company that can afford to have an entire team of at least 5-10 engineers doing nothing but working on your build system full time.

But I've watched it be insanely detrimental to the productivity of smaller companies and teams who don't understand the mountain of incidental complexity they're signing up for when adopting it. It's usually because a startup hires an ex-Googler who raves about how great Blaze is without understanding how much effort is spent internally to make it great.

Thanks for the discussion. What was the timeframe of your work in these Bazel codebases (or maybe it's ongoing)? And were they embedded systems or something else?

I have to admit, Bazel as a build system would mean it wouldnt even be considered by me, it has to fit in with everything else which typically means Makefiles, like it or not.

TBH, Java + Bazel + Discord makes it seem like its out of step with the embedded world.

Bazel is amazing and doing C++ with anything other is like going back to the stone age.

The Bazel team has done an amazing job, the VM is embedded and trimmed. It’s as easy and download and run.

And worst case you can invest in Buck2.

And only discord on top, but maybe I'm simply not hip enough

I forwarded your feedback to the team and we are now vigorously debating which other comms channels we can all live with

Maybe there is a way to create a native executable with GraalVM...

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