[IshKebab]

Yeah you can't really. It doesn't support a ton of syntax and features.

And they also said they were going to remove that ability too. Tbf to them after the inevitable response they did say they will come up with a proper solution, though that was some time ago.

Obviously the real solution is to use Bazel and not to use Gitlab CI as a crap build system.

[dijit]

Bazel seems like a good idea but it's far too immature to actually work in the FOSS world, almost none of the external _rules are google quality, and it damn near requires a PhD to set up properly.

I spent a good few months learning it and it's not the tool I would reach for in almost any circumstance unfortunately.

Docs are also lacking, which is certainly not a problem with GitlabCI

[IshKebab]

Yeah it's definitely not simple, but I have repeatedly worked for companies that get stuck on all the problems that Bazel solves. I'm like "we should use Bazel, it solves this issue properly", and they're just like "nah... so anyway this is a big problem, how do we solve it??!".

It would be nice if it had better integration with existing package managers like pip, cargo, npm and so on though. Vendoring your dependencies is fine for a big project like Chrome or Android or your company monorepo; it's a bit annoying for a small CLI tool or whatever.

Another option is something like Landlock Make, but I haven't tried it.

[hakre]

Yeah, why not? But often GNU Make is fine for incremental builds.