Aspect Insights

In this episode of Aspect Insights, host Alex Eagle is joined by Ed Schouten, author of Buildbarn, to explore the past five years of Buildbarn’s journey in the Bazel ecosystem. Ed shares how the project started, its evolution, and key milestones like migrating from Redis/S3 to disk-based storage, implementing virtual file systems, and adding multi-tenancy. Whether you’re a Bazel enthusiast or interested in remote execution and caching solutions, this episode offers a deep dive into one of the most widely adopted tools in the space.

Tune in to hear the full story and learn how Buildbarn became a core solution for remote build systems!

• [00:00:09] - Alex Eagle’s Introduction: Alex Eagle introduces the episode, mentioning the topic of Buildbarn and welcoming the guest, Ed Schouten.

• [00:02:45] - The Origin of Buildbarn: Ed Schouten talks about how Buildbarn started as an overkill solution for small toy projects, driven by his desire to experiment with remote execution.

• [00:09:13] - Configuration Changes: Ed explains the early changes made to Buildbarn, including switching from command-line flags to proper configuration files using JSON and protobuf messages.

• [00:18:00] - Remote Execution Protocol: Ed discusses how Buildbarn handles remote execution, the unique protocol used for communication between workers and schedulers, and how it ensures efficient action dispatching.

• [00:35:25] - Execution Time Optimization: Ed describes how the scheduler uses execution time predictions to prioritize actions, aiming to finish long-running tasks earlier for more efficient builds.