Build Systems Illustrated – A drawn introduction to build engineering & related topics

🔑 Learn the fundamentals – nudge your developer skills up, become a better engineer.

You use build systems on a daily basis: do you fully understand them? Are you missing anything of importance? Understanding build systems makes you a more valuable engineer:

• Understand what’s under the hood: troubleshoot issues faster and become a better leader and mentor.
• Know that certain types of problems cannot be entirely avoided: get more pragmatic.
• Become your organisation's prime glue provider: infuse everyone with the confidence to tweak the build system themselves.

Learn the fundamental build system concepts through this illustrated primer. You’ll obtain a deep understanding of a core aspect of software engineering, and will be able to confidently answer the questions “What are build systems? How do they work?”

📖 Why do you need this?

10 years in software development have taught me an important fact: to take a step back and look at the fundamentals helps tremendously in every situation.

This guide represents my condensed experience and learnings, conveyed the same way I do in discussions, presentations and mentoring sessions. They have helped friends and colleagues gain deeper understanding on many topics.

After reading this, you'll have a more fundamental understanding of how build systems work.

📦 What is included in this build systems primer?

The biggest covered topics:

• What is Programming?
• What are Programs?
• What does it mean to build Programs?
• Execution Graphs
• Dependency Trees
• Dependency Conflicts
• Dependency Space-Time

🎓 By whom is this written?

I’m Julien Perrochet, a software engineer with a decade of experience.

At my last employer, I held the role of Principal Software Engineer for one of the world’s best network & security integrators – open-systems.com. There, I was responsible for the architecture of about half of the data products while overseeing the revamp’ of the build chain. This for a team of about 100 users & engineers.

Build systems and related topics have been of interest to me since my first job, where I realized how clueless I was, albeit having just earned a very decent engineering degree.

Taking ownership of and delivering on annoying topics such as the build stack – which everyone loves to hate but only few attempt to fix – was a major factor in my quick career progression.

🔍 How is it presented?

Each page presents a concept with an illustration and a textual explanation that provides context. For example, the page introducing dependency trees looks like this:

✨ What if you don’t understand something?

Reach out to me on Twitter, LinkedIn or send me an e-mail, and I’ll see if I can get you unstuck. I reply to every inquiry I get, so please don’t hesitate.

🥺 What if you don’t like it?

You get a refund! As easy as that. No questions asked.

💵 Still hesitating?

Remember, you can expense it on you training budget (if you’re an employee).

😲 How did I get into this field?

To learn more about the path that led me into build engineering, see the related blog post. If you’re just curious about build systems but are not too much into illustrations, start with what is a build system?

Finally a discipline where all the leet-code tree traversal becomes useful!

So simple you can use it to teach your loved ones how it works!

You'll still need to chew through a few walls.

This might just be what you need to make the experience enjoyable!

Can you explain to the intern why the build chain went belly-up again?