Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

sandboxfs: A Failed Attempt to Speed Up Bazel's macOS Sandboxing

2025-06-13

A Google engineer attempted to improve Bazel's sandboxing performance on macOS with the sandboxfs project. sandboxfs used a user-space file system to create virtual file hierarchies more efficiently, replacing Bazel's original symlink approach. However, due to the fact that macOS symlink performance wasn't the main bottleneck, along with implementation issues and changes in the macOS ecosystem, sandboxfs was eventually abandoned. Despite this, the author believes its core idea—efficient sandbox creation—still holds promise for solving Bazel's sandboxing performance problems on macOS.

(blogsystem5.substack.com)

Development

Bonanza: A Cloud-Native Future for Bazel?

2025-04-10

On Bazel's 10th anniversary, a project called Bonanza is gaining attention. It aims to completely revamp Bazel, moving the entire build process to the cloud to address Bazel's shortcomings in both large and small projects. Bonanza achieves truly incremental builds by remotely executing all operations, including dependency management and build graph construction, resulting in significantly faster build times. While still in proof-of-concept, its design and technical potential offer a new direction for future build systems, hinting at a cloud-native build era.

(blogsystem5.substack.com)

Development

Hands-On Graphics Without X11: A NetBSD wscons Deep Dive

2025-01-17

This article details how to perform low-level graphics programming on NetBSD without X11 or Wayland, leveraging the wscons framework. The author demonstrates accessing and manipulating the framebuffer to draw graphics directly on the terminal and handle keyboard input. This bypasses traditional graphics systems, allowing direct hardware interaction, ideal for resource-constrained environments like embedded systems, enabling faster boot times and reduced resource consumption.

(blogsystem5.substack.com)

Development framebuffer

Code Reviews: A Success Story

2025-01-15

Engineer X at Google worked on two projects with vastly different code review processes. The first, with minimal review, resulted in a buggy release. The second, with a thorough and rigorous review process, although slower initially, yielded a bug-free release and significant learning for X, positively impacting his career. The article argues that code reviews aren't inherently antagonistic; it's the people involved and how the tool is utilized that matters for improving code quality and mentorship.

(blogsystem5.substack.com)

Development

Revisiting NetBSD's Build System: A Powerful, Yet Arcane Tool

2024-12-31

This blog post revisits NetBSD's build system, a powerful yet somewhat arcane system based on a combination of BSD make and shell scripts. It allows building a complete NetBSD system from scratch on virtually any POSIX platform, without root privileges, and supports cross-compilation to various architectures. The author details the build process, including toolchain generation, build structure, the destdir mechanism, unprivileged builds, and distribution media creation. While acknowledging shortcomings like inefficient incremental builds and imperfect dependency management, the author highlights the system's strengths and design philosophy. The author concludes by mentioning a current embedded project utilizing NetBSD and explores the possibility of migrating the build system to Bazel for enhanced efficiency.

(blogsystem5.substack.com)

Development build system

Synology DS923+ vs. Home-Built FreeBSD NAS: A Head-to-Head Comparison

2024-12-19

Julio Merino compares a Synology DS923+ against his home-built NAS running FreeBSD 14 with ZFS. His custom NAS utilizes a powerful ThinkStation workstation with ample CPU and RAM, while the DS923+ is a compact, dedicated NAS appliance with Synology's DSM and btrfs. Both offer comparable IOPS and network performance, but the DS923+ excels in noise and power consumption. DSM provides a user-friendly experience and robust backup solutions, while FreeBSD/ZFS requires more manual configuration and maintenance. Ultimately, the author prefers the DS923+ for its increased peace of mind regarding data security and management.

(blogsystem5.substack.com)

Hardware