remote-apis VS pharo

In the case of the Remote Execution/Cache API used by Bazel among others[1] at least, it's a bit more detailed. There's an "ActionCache" and an actual content-addressed cache that just stores blobs ("ContentAddressableStorage"). When you run a `gcc -O2 foo.c -o foo.o` command (locally or remotely; doesn't matter), you upload an "Action" into the action cache, which basically said "This command was run. As a result it had this stderr, stdout, error code, and these input files read and output files written." The input and output files are then referenced by the hash of their contents, in this case.

Most importantly you can look up an action in the ActionCache without actually running it. So now when another person comes by and runs the same build command, they say "Has this Action, with these inputs, been run before?" and the server can say "Yes, and the output is a file identified by hash XYZ" where XYZ is the hash of foo.o

So realistically you always some mix of "input content hashing" and "output content hashing" (the second being the definition of 'content addressable'.)

[1] https://github.com/bazelbuild/remote-apis/blob/main/build/ba...

Not only it's distributed like distcc, Bazel also provide sandboxing to ensure that environment factors does not affect the build/test results. This might not mean much for smaller use cases, but at scale with different compiler toolchains targeting different OS and CPU Architecture, the sandbox helps a ton in keeping your cache accurate.

On top of it, the APIs Bazel uses to communicate with the remote execution environment is standardized and adopted by other build tools with multiple server implementation to match it. Looking into https://github.com/bazelbuild/remote-apis/#clients, you could see big players are involved: Meta, Twitter, Chromium project, Bloomberg while there are commercial supports for some server implementations.

Finally, on top of C/C++, Bazel also supports these remote compilation / remote test execution for Go, Java, Rust, JS/TS etc... Which matters a lot for many enterprise users.

Disclaimer: I work for https://www.buildbuddy.io/ which provides one of the remote execution server implementation and I am a contributor to Bazel.

Regardless of whether you should use Bazel or not, my hope is that any future build systems attempt to adopt Bazel's remote execution protocol (or at least a protocol that is similar in spirit):

https://github.com/bazelbuild/remote-apis

In my opinion the protocol is fairly well designed.

> The thing I really would like to see is a smarter CI system. Caching of build outputs, so you don't have to rebuild the world from scratch every time. Distributed execution of tests and compilation, so you are not bottle-necked by one machine.

This is already achievable nowadays using Bazel (https://bazel.build) as a build system. It uses a gRPC based protocol for offloading/caching the actual build on a build cluster (https://github.com/bazelbuild/remote-apis). I am the author of one of the Open Source build cluster implementations (Buildbarn).

Very nice! I really like the ease-of-use of this, as well as the scale-to-zero costs. That's a tricky thing to achieve. Seems like it could become a standard path to ease the migration from local to remote builds.

If the author is interested in standardizing the same, I'd suggest implementing the REAPI protocol (https://github.com/bazelbuild/remote-apis). It should be amenable to implementing on a Lambda-esque back-end, and is already standard amongst most tools doing Remote Execution (including Bazel! Bazel+llama could be fun). And equally, it's totally usable by a distcc-esque distribution tool (recc[1] is one example) - that's also what Android is doing before they finish migrating to Bazel ([2], sadly not yet oss'd).

The main interesting challenge I expect this project to hit is going to be worker-local caching: for compilation actions it's not too bad to skip assuming the compiler is built into the container environment, but if branching out into either hermetic toolchains or data-heavy action types (like linking), fetching all bytes to the ephemeral worker anew each time may prove to be prohibitive. On the other hand, that might be a nice transition point to switch to persistent workers: use a lambda backed solution for the scale-to-0 case, and switch execution stacks under the hood to something based on reused VMs when hitting sufficient scale that persistent executors start to win out.

(Disclaimer: I TL'd the creation of this API, and Google implementation of the same).

[1] https://gitlab.com/BuildGrid/recc

[2] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/11/welcome-android-op...

Smalltalk (https://pharo.org/)

Smalltalk also did this. These days my impression is the most active tendril is https://pharo.org/.

What I find especially interesting about that relative to this Python distro is that the Pharo executable runs in a host OS (e.g. whatever your daily driver is) and can maintain different image files for different Pharo system states. So not only do you have the integrated language/OS (which is very cool on its own), but you also have something that feels like Docker containers.

And it even goes beyond containers because those image files really are the state of the system at the time they're saved, which means you can ask for that file in a bug report and get guaranteed bug reproduction, which is pretty incredible.

It is the initial alpha release end-user can test. It is a complete port from Pharo to Cuis-Smalltalk. Likely bugs will be find.

I've recently started learning Pharo^1 and I think there is a lot to like about it. It hurts to say as a Lisp and Emacs fan, but using the Pharo IDE feels like using Emacs/extending Emacs with Emacs Lisp, but somehow with a more tightly integrated language and environment. Being able to easily inspect the code related to the UI widgets, modify it and make changes on the fly are unlike anything I've experienced in other languages. I think a whole OS built on top of Smalltalk would be so cool and really play into the strengths of Smalltalk. I'm also amazed that SmallTalk had a lot of these IDE like features since before the 80s^2. I know there are a lot of issues with image based languages, and I admit I haven't been using one long enough to have experienced all the Gotcha, so what does HN think of Smalltalks and it's derivatives, and what are you all doing with them?

1. https://pharo.org/

2. https://youtu.be/uknEhXyZgsg?t=2366

Cool! I program for around 7 months in Pharo now at Yesplan [0]. We're hiring a devops engineer and a software engineer. While the Pharo website [1] avoids mentioning it, it's a Smalltalk descendant.

What I like about Pharo:

1. Programming in the debugger makes things feel much quicker

2. Evaluating expressions inside your code editor makes programming feel much quicker

3. The ability to quickly browse classes and methods makes programming feel much quicker (e.g. I type Date somewhere, select it, press CMD+B and now I browse the Date class).

Don't get me wrong, Pharo has downsides, especially when it comes to using it in production (IMO). With that said, the language feels fun to use! I definitely like it now as my first language for side projects as it is more graphical, more playful, and feels quicker for iterative development (e.g. when consuming APIs). It's why I wanted to learn it in the first place, it has shown me a different philosophy on how programmers interact with a programming language and IDE.

[0] https://yesplan.be/en/vacancies

[1] https://pharo.org

Of course, Alan Kay's Smalltalk 80 is for many the quintessential lost paradise of personal computing. Some modern descendants are Squeak, Pharo and Cuis. Then there's Lisp machines, or for something more Unix-like, there's Plan 9.. so many cool systems deprived of mass adoption for no good reason.

> You know, that "assembling things live in the sky" Lisp feeling (Yegge's phrase, not mine). The only other computation environment that is right there en par in flexibility and conveyance of the same trippy feeling is, of course, Emacs.

Do you know Pharo? The experience you describe is also typical in the Smalltalk family. See https://pharo.org/

Smalltalk could be used as the "ideal" tool (balance between Code & No-Code). It starts out with a simple graphical interface for doing everything, but it also encourages you to customize everything by modifying the underlying code. Of course, the disadvantage is that it's quite niche - very few people actually use it nowadays.

In Smalltalk there is no such thing as source files. Your program is an image which can be freely modified and dumped. Look at Pharo[1] which is a modern Smalltalk environment. You start it up and create classes in the IDE, but never do you create "source files".

[1] https://pharo.org/