Lessons Learned Building a Build Tool
summary
Built an alternative build system called Kobalt written in Kotlin that prioritizes valid Kotlin build files so IDE auto-completion works, a plugin model based on extension points (Hollywood principle), and features like Maven repo uploads via Aether, flavors, wrapper and version checks. Implements incremental tasks via input/output hashes and speeds up multi-module builds with parallel scheduling by repeatedly launching free nodes (topological sort + dynamic eligibility), and reaches the original design goals — production-ready but open for contributions.
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chapters (23)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:51What led to Kobalt?
- 5:45What is Kobalt?
- 7:29Design goals
- 9:27Auto completion
- 10:00Incremental tasks
- 11:08Parallel builds
- 11:55Profiles
- 13:25Easy project dependencies
- 14:56Plug-in architecture
- 17:27Other features
- 21:07Example project (ktor)
- 22:16Topological sort
- 24:35Single threaded
- 25:01Multithreaded (naive)
- 25:45Multithreaded (DynamicGraph)
- 26:51Dynamic Graph algorithm
- 27:21DynamicGraph in action
- 29:04The problem
- 31:05Example: a JSON library
- 34:50Example: persistence
- 40:02Ad hoc polymorphism in a nutshell
- 40:53Wrapping up
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