CC: Neil McGovern, Executive Director, GNOME Foundation
Hi,
BuildStream started a while ago, the first commit was in Nov 2016(!). It was first presented at FOSDEM 2017. A lot has changed since...
Technology
BuildStream started out with artifact storage built on top of ostree. It was using bwrap directly for its sandboxing. These technologies tied it to the Linux platform exclusively. It also did not have a remoting story other than sharing cached artifacts.
Today, BuildStream is completely built on top of Content Addressable Storage (CAS), leveraging buildbox-casd, which is supported on multiple platforms. It also has a remoting story, having adopted the Remote Execution API, which now even works with workspaces. Sandboxing was factored out and made pluggable by using buildbox-run.
Community
Tristan van Berkom started out as the so-called Benevolent Dictator. The set of committers has grown over time, and we have shifted to a peer-based model. Tristan has been largely uninvolved for a period of time, and the project has continued to make progress. This is a very healthy sign!
Future
The time has come to move to a new home as well. GNOME has been a welcoming and friendly place where this project started, but with the growth above, we are looking to transition to somewhere where we can operate as a larger project in its own right. At the Apache Software Foundation, the home of many well-known infrastructure projects, BuildStream will be in the company of other build systems, like Apache Ant, Archiva, Buildr, Gump, and Maven. We think that we are able to grow the community, both in terms of developers as well as users more effectively there.
We will be working with a number of Apache Software Foundation folks on the transition. While doing so, GNOME has generously offered for us to continue here, until we are ready.
In the end this will not be a goodbye, it will be a see-you-elsewhere! Looking forward to keep working with everyone.
