bob

Write Once, Build Once, Anywhere

Bob is a high-level build tool for multi-language projects.

Use it to build codebases organized in multiple repositories or in a monorepo.

When to consider using Bob?

• You want a pipeline which runs locally and on CI.
• You want remote caching and never having to do the same build twice.
• You want to get rid of "Works on My Machine".
• You like Bazel and its features but think it's too complex.
• You want a build system which keeps frontend tooling functional.

Getting Started

Docs | Install

Installing From Source

If you want to go wild, and have Go 1.17 or later installed, the short version is:

git clone https://github.com/benchkram/bob
cd bob
go install

For shell autocompletion (bash and zsh supported) add source <(bob completion) to your .bashrc/.zshrc.

How it works

Bob generates its internal build graph from tasks described in a bob.yaml file (usually referred to as "Bobfile"). Each build step is executed in a sandboxed shell only using the given dependencies required from the nix package manager.

The basic components of a build task are:

• input: Whenever an input changes, the task's commands need to be re-executed.
• cmd: Commands to be executed
• target: Files, directories or docker images created during execution of cmd
• dependencies Dependencies managed by the Nix package manager

Example of a bob.yaml file:

nixpkgs: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/nixos-23.11.tar.gz
build:
  build:
    input: "*"
    cmd: go build -o ./app
    target: ./app
    dependencies: [go]

Multiline sh and bash commands are entirely possible, powered by mvdan/sh.

Comparisons

• Dagger vs. bob
• Bazel vs. bob
• Mage vs. bob