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Comment by egnehots | Hacker News Reader

This looks so similar to Bazel..

What's the advantage of using Please?

There's a section in the FAQ titled "WHY USE PLEASE INSTEAD OF BAZEL, BUCK OR PANTS?" https://please.build/faq.html

i read that part but the explanation is poor at best... basically they dont like the jvm because. and thats all that they really said

It's tuned to the preferences of another company; if you prefer their taste on the finer points, that's one. Secondly, it's written in Go, so installation should be simpler.

What's hard about "brew install bazel"?

Well, for one, Linux/Windows/Solaris don't "brew"...

Apparently Windows doesn't "please" either! :)

nix for Linux, and maybe Solaris. Unfortunately Windows is go through instructions.

Why should I have to install the jdk for a build tool when I’m not using Java myself?

Why should I have to install dependencies when I don't directly use them!

i don't notice people complaining about needing ruby, python, perl or other things installed for a given tool that depends on them nearly as much as java. interesting.

I actually do (internally) complain when some tool uses python/perl/ruby. It's usually painful to install and maintain compared to most C or Go in this case.

Especially virtualenvs are an axe I like to grind.

python is generally preinstalled on all distributions i know of, because its needed for some utility applications.

ruby on the other hand gets quite a bit of flack as well, because most distributions are so far behind the official ones. that's probably why an embedded ruby binary has become a thing.

Are you opposed to java, or to installing being more than one step?

I’m opposed to tools bringing along the equivalent of an entire operating system, with a massive attack surface, versioning issues, separate package management, and everything else along for the ride.

A self-contained binary has everything it needs to function and is typically much smaller. If I’m not using Java for my work, then I don’t want to be encumbered with having to think about it, or stay up to speed with releases and everything else.

I like to see projects with as few dependencies as possible, even when statically linked. Bringing in the JDK when it’s not needed is tiresome.

Perhaps OpenJDK can be installed locally by Please when not detected in $PATH?

I mean simple in terms of the theoretical possibility of a single binary vs. any form of local compilation, packaging, or dependencies. In practice, I didn’t check, maybe they depend on other native libraries and installation is more than downloading a single executable.

Downvote? Both points were stated in the FAQ. I did extrapolate from Go to the installation point.

No runtime dependency on the JVM is huge.

Why?

The JVM is okay if you need to build the build-tool (or whatever tool you're interested in). Ideally, to use such a tool, one shouldn't have to install an entire programming language and development environment. Personally, if I work in languages other than Java, I don't want to install the JDK just to use a cool tool. The tool should stand on its own.

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