rules_go VS Git

There’s an issue I reported (along with a proof of concept fix) over 4 years ago, that has yet to be fixed: building a mixed source project containing Go & C++ & C++ protocol buffers results in silently broken binaries as rules_go will happily not forward along the linker arguments that the C++ build targets (the protobuf ones, using the built in C++ rules) declare.

See https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/issues/1486

Not very confidence inspiring when Google’s build system falls over when you combine three technologies that are used commonly throughout Google’s code base (two of which were created by Google).

If you’re Google, sure, use Bazel. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend it. Google will cater to their needs and their needs only — putting the code out in the open means you get the privilege of sharing in their tech debt, and if something isn’t working, you can contribute your labor to them for free.

No thanks :)

Bazel in theory maintains its own directory of generated code that your IDE should refer to. Back when I last used Bazel, there was a bug open to make gopls properly understand this ("go packages driver" is the search term). Nobody touched this bug for a couple years, so I gave up.

Here's the bug: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/issues/512

I basically wouldn't use Bazel with Go. Go already has a build system, Bazel is best for languages that don't ship a build system, like C++.

`proto_library` for building the `.bin` file from protos works great. Generating stubs/messages for "all" languages does not. Each language does not want to implement gRPC rules, the gRPC team does not want to implement rules for each language. Sort of a deadlock situation. For example:

- C++: https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/bazel/cc_grpc_libra...

- Python: https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/bazel/python_rules....

- ObjC: https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/bazel/objc_grpc_lib...

- Java: https://github.com/grpc/grpc-java/blob/master/java_grpc_libr...

- Go (different semantics than all of the other): https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/blob/master/proto/def...

But there's also no real cohesion within the community. The biggest effort to date has been in https://github.com/stackb/rules_proto which integrates with gazelle.

tl;dr: Low alignment results in diverging implementations that are complicated to understand for newcomers. Buff's approach is much more appealing as it's a "this is the one way to do the right thing" and having it just work by detecting `proto_library` and doing all of the linting/registry stuff automagically in CI would be fantastic.

This can be ugly in some languages. There’s decent go support in VSCode if you follow these copy & paste instructions here https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/wiki/Editor-setup

Bazel go_embed_data

Look at any PR/patch series that got merged into the Git project. https://github.com/git/git/

Any random one. Because those that did not meet the minimum criteria for a well-crafted history would not have passed review.

Boy, I can't find this either (but also, the kernel mailing list is _really_ difficult to search). I really remember Linus saying something like "it's not a real SCM, but maybe someone could build one on top of it someday" or something like that, but I cannot figure out how to find that.

You _can_ see, though, that in his first README, he refers to what he's building as not a "real SCM":

https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23...

Here is the direct link, as HN somehow removes the query string: https://github.com/git/git/commits?author=peff&since=2023-10...

I understand all that.

I'm saying, if you write a survey and one of the possible answers is "diff", but you don't clearly define what you mean by "diff", then don't be surprised if respondents use any reasonable definition that makes sense to them. Ask an ambiguous question, get a mishmash of answers.

The thing that Git uses for packfiles is called a "delta" by Git, but it's also reasonable to call it a "diff". After all, Git's delta algorithm is "greatly inspired by parts of LibXDiff from Davide Libenzi"[1]. Not LibXDelta but LibXDiff.

Yes, how Git stores blobs (using deltas) is orthogonal to how Git uses blobs. But while that orthogonality is useful for reasoning about Git, it's not wrong to think of a commit as the totality of what Git does, including that optimization. (Some people, when learning Git, stumble over the way it's described as storing full copies, think it's wasteful. For them to wrap their heads around Git, they have to understand that the optimization exists. Which makes sense because Git probably wouldn't be practical if it lacked that optimization.)

The reason I'm bringing all this up is, if you're trying to explain Git, which is what the original article is about, then it's very important to keep in mind that someone who is learning Git needs to know what you mean when you say "diff". Most people who already know Git would tend to gravitate toward the definition of "diff" that you're assuming (the thing that Git computes on the fly and never stores), but people who already know Git aren't the target audience when you're teaching Git.

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[1] https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/diff-delta.c