Earthly
Dev tools
build automation
SHOW HN2021
116points
37comments
#458of 2,533 in 2021
Top 19%of 2021 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
10 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 5 critical, out of 26 comments about the project. Thread score +0.22.
Design: 3 for, 3 againstIdea: 4 for, 2 againstPerformance: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful for reproducing CI builds locally
From 2 comments
> The #1 reason people use Earthly today is to be able to reproduce CI builds locally. Earthly helps create a consistency layer, providing a level of guarantee that the build…
mastax on HNYep. An Earthfile describes your build steps in a containerized format. Because of this sandboxing it can run identically in CI or on your local. So you just describe your build…
adamgordonbell on HN
Good alternative to Dockerfile not governed by Docker
From 2 comments
Nice. Been looking for something like this - a Dockerfile equivalent that isn't governed by the Docker folks, with whom I generally do not see eye to eye with. Bookmarked for…
junon on HNOh geez. Dockerfiles are reason #1 for docker's popularity. Shipping 'the lot' so the artifact works everywhere is #2. This is incredibly inefficient for most use cases. `docker…
akdor1154 on HN
Objections
Verbose build-arg and env var passing
From 2 comments
I tried using Earthly, great product. Unfortunately, we rejected it at our organization due to how verbose the commands are. I want my users to be able to say `earthly…
honkycat on HNThe required build arg and env var names are already listed in the Earthfile as `ARG` and `RUN --secret ...`. So I think specifying it in the commandline is redundant.
andyonthewings on HN
Cache misses hard to understand
From 1 comment
I love earthly! It has been a joy to use. One thing I haven’t gotten right is caching. Some of my builds have targets they depend on that are very expensive but rarely change,…
cmckn on HN
Requests
Add earthly ls to list targets
From 2 comments
I love earthly! It has been a joy to use. One thing I haven’t gotten right is caching. Some of my builds have targets they depend on that are very expensive but rarely change,…
cmckn on HN+1 on `earthly ls`. I've also thought it would be valuable to have "public" and "private" targets. When looking at a new codebase it can be hard to know which targets I should…
jazzdan on HN
Public and private targets
From 2 comments
+1 on `earthly ls`. I've also thought it would be valuable to have "public" and "private" targets. When looking at a new codebase it can be hard to know which targets I should…
jazzdan on HNYeah, exactly. Or even just not listed in `earthly ls`, maybe you'd still want to be able to call them manually for debugging purposes.
jazzdan on HN
Questions
Why is it called earthly?
From 1 comment
Why is it called "earthly"?
givemeethekeys on HN
How does this differ from Mesos?
From 1 comment
How does this differ from Mesos?
citilife on HN
Alternatives named
Taskfile / make
From 2 comments
I tried using Earthly, great product. Unfortunately, we rejected it at our organization due to how verbose the commands are. I want my users to be able to say `earthly…
honkycat on HNYeah, that was what I was doing in the prototype stage. But then I thought "why do we need two task runners? " and ended up just going with task files. They sell it as a make…
honkycat on HN
Bazel
From 2 comments
Interesting. Dev tools post always catch my attention. For me, your comment regarding `build-arg` is in the same bucket as the comment regarding the need for a `ls` command.…
no_circuit on HNIt’s a build tool, I’d be surprised if something like it worked well for non build related tasks. I suspect bazel would be equally verbose (if not even worse or impossible). I…
AlphaSite on HN
Dockerfile
From 1 comment
Nice. Been looking for something like this - a Dockerfile equivalent that isn't governed by the Docker folks, with whom I generally do not see eye to eye with. Bookmarked for…
junon on HN