Basil: A Powerful Build Tool Orchestrator for Web Development

In this episode, Jake investigates whether the existence of build tools is a symptom of the web being underpowered, or if they are part of the solution to make the web better. Surma shares his experience of learning about Bazel and how it can be used to build web projects.

Resources:

• Touching cloth.
• Emirates silly class.
• Yes, we have done "The big build tool bonanza" before.
• Jake: Although "Terry's ringpull museum" isn't a real thing, the closest thing that comes to mind is a site I still use every time I buy a new pair of shoes, it's Ian's Shoelace Site.
• Jake's 10 year old blog posts on progressive enhancement.
• NextJS server actions.
• Rollup's docs.
• Jake and Surma’s talk on writing custom Rollup plugins.
• Vite.
• Some of the issues with HTTP/2 push.
• HTTP 203 episode on importing JSON.
• Using import attributes with build tools.
• Improving TypeScript types for import attributes.
• Silly view transition demo.
• Jason Lengstorf video: 4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea.
• Bazel.
• Aspect’s Bazel rules for JavaScript.
• Bazel Remote Caching.