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mike_hearn12/09/20242 repliesview on HN

It did have influence. Take a look at Gradle, which is widely used in the JVM space. It uses a general, strongly typed language (Kotlin) to configure it and it has a very sophisticated plugin and modules system for the build system itself, not just for the apps it's building.

Gradle has its problems, and I often curse it for various reasons, but I'm pretty glad it uses regular languages that I can reuse in non-build system contexts. And the fact that it just bites the bullet and treats build systems as special programs with all the same support that it gives to the programs it's building does have its advantages, even if the results can get quite complex.


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Rochus12/09/2024

Interesting. Using a regular language has some advantages, but also many disadvantages. One of the intentions of BUSY was - similar to e.g. Meson - to avoid a fully Turing complete language, because then people start to implement complex things, thus leaving the declarative character of a build specification, which again makes the build more difficult to understand and maintain.

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jamesfinlayson12/10/2024

When did it get support for Kotlin? I thought that was comparatively recent and that Groovy was the DSL for forever before that.

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