Build Systems à la Carte

by Andrey Mokhov

Abstract
Build systems are awesome, terrifying -- and unloved. They are used by every developer around the world, but are rarely the object of study. In this talk I will present a systematic, and executable, framework for developing and comparing build systems, viewing them as related points in a landscape rather than as isolated phenomena. By teasing apart existing build systems, we can recombine their components, allowing us to prototype new build systems with desired properties. The presented framework is available at https://github.com/snowleopard/build.
 
Bio
Andrey Mokhov is a senior lecturer in computer engineering at Newcastle University and a Royal Society Industry Fellow. He is interested in applying abstract mathematics and functional programming to industrial engineering problems. In 2015 he was a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge redesigning the build system of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler; this project is currently continued as part of a 4-year Royal Society research fellowship dedicated to studying build systems in general.

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