Progressive Integration

We want to allow Zack to integrate build steps with other build systems early on.

Deep integration required?

For an optimal experience, Zack probably needs a certain level of custom integration with supported wrapped build systems and/or language ecosystems. We want to make that easy but it will still require custom code.

Shallow integration

But Zack should provide a “good” escape hatch early on: A way to integrate a different build system to perform certain build steps. That requires running tasks that don’t have any knowledge about Zack and require “full control” over the build environment.

An Execution VFS could provide that build system with a familiar view of the project, without making its execution unhermetic.

HTTPS Interception could even allow these build systems to fetch external dependencies while still retaining knowledge and control over these dependencies.

Automatic deeper integration

If the build system, e.g. already spawns sub processes like compiler invocations, we might intercept those and provide caching for them, transparently, without the build system noticing.

Smart integration primitives

But a lot of build systems avoid this because restarting JIT-compiled (Just-In-Time compiled, as performed by nodejs/Java) compilers can be expensive.

Maybe there is a way to make Zack aware of these logically independent compiler invocations nevertheless with minimal custom code on the Zack side, or minimal integration points or code changes in the sub build system?