Bazel: Do We Really Need Another Build Tool?
summary
Bazel claims huge speed via strict sandboxing and caching and demonstrates building a multi-language repo (C++, Go, Rust, Scala) with 172 parallel tasks and a Starlark workspace that pins external artifacts (Starlark workspace isolation). It works well for large monorepos with dozens of tiny packages but breaks on evolving ecosystems: rule sets lag, JVM deps require tools like bazelisk and gazelle, and real projects hit dependency hell (example: had to forked rules_scala to use newer Scala). IDE support remains spotty.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:10Bazel’s adoption
- 5:26Core principles
- 7:56How Bazel works
- 14:16Live demo
- 20:19Large-scale builds
- 24:56External dependencies
- 28:08ID support limits
- 30:13When to use Bazel
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