[japgolly]

> If you're familiar with Blaze / Bazel, Buck or Pants you will probably find Please very familiar

Yes, so why would I use Please over any of them? I've spent close to 10min reading and have no idea why this exists or why anyone would use it. It looks like Bazel with a different config format, in which case why wouldn't one just use Bazel?

[Rzor]

From their FAQ: >Why use Please instead of Bazel, Buck or Pants?

>All four of these systems are quite closely related in the scheme of things, being inspired by (or in Bazel's case, a direct open sourcing of) Google's Blaze.

>Several of us had worked at Google and used Blaze extensively there; we were excited about it being open sourced as Bazel but by then we were already using Please internally. It's a great system but we have slightly different goals, specifically we're aiming Please at being lighter weight and pushing the boundaries of what can be done within the BUILD language. Since Please is written in Go there's no runtime dependency on the JVM.

>We actually used Buck for some months internally before deciding to write Please and before it was capable of building our repo. We preferred it to other options available, but again we're focused on different goals; Please is easier to extend to new languages, has a bunch of features that we specifically wanted (e.g. test sandboxing) and has a stronger focus on BUILD language correctness. Conversely we have much less support for mobile development.

>We're least familiar with Pants; one of our developers briefly tried it and while we liked many aspects we didn't think it was the ideal fit for us at the time.

[mleonhard]

That's a lot of text to say three things: doesn't use JVM, has test sandboxing, and the DSL is "more correct". This doesn't tell me what I want to know.

[mook]

I've only used Bazel in anger (in a medium-small sized project); I've found it really frustrating because it effectively has two separate languages (inside build files and in custom rules), even though it's both Starlark. It's especially terrible for doing things that Bazel didn't already know about (i.e. running shell commands to generate things, even if you could tell Bazel all the inputs and outputs).

We wanted to switch away from Bazel because of the mismatch; it looked like Pants and Buck had the same issues. At the time Please didn't have sensible documentation so it was skipped. From what they have now it seemed like it's more reasonable in this respect, but I don't actually know yet; perhaps somebody who knows can chime in?

[joshuamorton]

What do you mean? Genrules are very good at running she'll commands (or even entire executables).

By custom rules do you mean macros, or full on custom rules?

[samtrack2019]

I hate bazel with passion, I have to use it at work on really large project, and the UX is so wrong... built for google by google and my CTO thinks we can be google if we use it...

[gravypod]

What specifically about the UX is annoying to you? I'd be interested in hearing what could be done to improve the experience. Is it just writing BUILD files or is it the cli interface?

[dfgdghdf]

Some people really dislike the JVM, and Please is written in Go.

[ur-whale]

Exactly what I was about to say. Bazel is a monstrosity in terms of how much shite it pulls in to get started.

[grosales]

I also was trying to figure out why I would use this over Bazel. Then I remember reading a story yesterday about how ex-googlers miss their tooling when they leave. Their CTO is an ex-googler, so maybe this is the reason.

[lvh]

But Bazel is developed by Google itself right now. Presumably if you missed Google tooling you'd rather use Bazel, no?

I'm not suggesting Bazel is perfect: I think e.g. Starlark's insistence on being a separate language does more harm than good. (FWIW I also think the JVM objection is a little silly.) But I am saying preferring the Google tooling would ostensibly mean you like Bazel a lot already :)

[tatskaari]

In a word: simplicity

Bazel has a lot of magic and crazy abstractions. Please is far easier to get your head around and as a result, far easier to bend to your iron will.

[throwaway894345]

Please predates Bazel IIRC. It just didn’t gain as much traction. Please seems considerably easier to operate, but it doesn’t enjoy Bazel’s rigorous usage (although I’ve only encountered bugs when trying to use Bazel to build Python 3 projects).

[thundergolfer]

Bazel’s Python integration quality is a level down from its Java, Go, and C++ integrations. It’s getting better though.