back to article Squeezing in little Quake between builds? Not any more: Facebook Bucks up Java compile tool

Citing the social network's need for speed, Facebook senior software engineer Jonathan Keljo says the company's developer tools group has revisited how its Buck open-source build tool compiles Java code and made it faster still. As such a new version of the software was released today for programmers to fetch and play with: it …

  1. DNTP

    "Soul-killing fountain of frustration"

    I have no idea what it's like for you guys but at my place our official policy is that developers don't have souls. In between builds they just get stuffed back into their cloning tanks and when we need them later we just connect the coffee machine to the NUTRIENT INPUT port until the developer reactivates.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    .dex?

    So Facebook basically reinvented dll/so files?

    I see a bright future for IT... we're truly in the hands of the brightest minds, or in the minds of the brightest hands, I don't know...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Facebook's Android app became so large"

    How big is it? Facebook's iOS app weighs in at 240 MB, is Android's even larger? I can't understand why the app is anything like that humongous, since it is downloading all the content from the server. When you add in the cached data, I've seen it grow to nearly 1 GB - I've taken to deleting and reinstalling it every few months to clean that up and make it run a bit faster.

  4. Adam 52 Silver badge

    One of the really useful things Microsoft did around 2005 was introduce "edit and continue" to Visual Studio. A game changer in the dev-test-retest cycle (yes, I know interpreted languages have had it for years and some of the DOS era compilers has incremental compilation).

    These days I watch the continuous delivery crowd waiting 20-30 minutes between code iterations for their Jenkins jobs to run and want to cry.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Continuous integration is a different idea - it doesn't forbid to compile and debug locally. It's just a way to ensure everything integrates correctly and all tests are run (plus other tasks like packaging, for example). It also could ensure testers and users get an "official" build, and not several different ones from different developers.

  5. Randy Hudson

    I've been a java developer for 19 years and I don't remember ever waiting more than 2 seconds for a recompile due to my own code changes, or batches of changes I've accepted from source control.

  6. Ilsa Loving

    Shit code

    Maybe if they didn't write such mindbogglingly shit code, they wouldn't have issues with compile times being so long. I mean, honestly, the facebook and messenger together are approx 750mb. What in the name of $DEITY and all that is holy did they have to do to bloat their apps up that much?

    Their applications are proof that they don't actually know how to write code, and anything they make available should very carefully evaluated before used by others.

  7. barbara.hudson
    Black Helicopters

    Edit-run-compile cycle?

    "Asked if we were talking about idling away hours waiting for the Java compiler, Keljo said the time savings would be measured in seconds. "If the builds were in hours, there would be pitchforks and torches," he said, noting that build times interrupt the edit-run-compile cycle."

    I don't think so. Edits wouldn't show up in the final code until you compile - you'd be running the old previously compiled code. If you've ever watched someone edit and run (skipping the compile stage) and tearing their hair out because the "fixed" bugs are still there and they've never used a compiled language ...

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