buildy - An ultra-fast parallel build system for local iteration

Warning: buildy is not yet ready for use

buildy is very simple and configurable. It's meant to facilitate development by watching the file system and rebuilding as necessary.

The core of buildy is in it's configuration file. Simply add a file named .buildy.yml into the root of the project.

This configuration file tells buildy exactly what to do.

.buildy.yml spec

server_deps:
  watch:
    - server/package.json
    - server/yarn.lock
  build:
    - cd server && yarn install

server:
  depends_on:
    - server_deps
  watch:
    - server/src
  run:
    - cd server && node src/server.js

The configuration file is composed of targets, which are an entity to build. Each target can define its dependencies, files to watch, commands to build, and commands to run after the build completes.

targets will be run in parallel as much as possible, waiting to start until their dependencies are built.

The commands in the build list under a target are run one after another in a shell working from the directory containing the .buildy.yml.

The target will only be rebuilt if either no watch paths exist, or any of the contents of the watch paths have changed since the last build.

buildy maintains a list of checksums in a directory named .buildy next to the .buildy.yml. This directory should be ignored in version control.

Once a target is built, it will be run. The commands in run will be executed one after another. They can continue running in the background, which is useful for running programs such as a web server.

Even after everything is built, buildy will watch all the paths in the watch directories for new changes in the background. When any change is detected, those targets are rebuilt. Children targets (those that have a dependency on the rebuilt target) will only be rerun if their watch files changed as well.

Whenever a target is rebuilt, its run commands are rerun as well, terminating any that may still be running.

Usage

Install with cargo install buildy.

Then, simply run buildy in a directory with .buildy.yml.

Known Issues

• run commands that should be restarted when watch paths change need to use exec or else they won't terminate properly.
• No unit tests
• If a build fails, the checksum should not be saved - so that it gets rerun.