Towards Faster Cross-Platform Builds

Bazel relies on multiple layers of caching to make incremental builds fast, yet correct. The most important layer is the remote cache, which allows sharing build action results across machines. Getting a high cache hit ratio can be challenging in mixed environments, where developers, build machines, and target devices use different hardware – so-called "cross-platform builds". Bazel's ability to switch flags through configuration transitions, while powerful and flexible, also makes caching harder. In this talk, we'll survey ongoing efforts to make Bazel's use of the remote cache more efficient. In particular, we'll cover the following common use cases:

Sharing build results between Linux build machines and Mac developer machines
Sharing platform-independent build artifacts, such as Java libraries, between different target platforms.
Preventing unnecessary rebuilds from configuration transitions.

Speakers: Greg Estren, Ara Nguyen, Tiago Quelhas, Fabian Meumertzheim

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