Bret Brown <mail_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Some build systems could just pause a build job and block until relevant
> nodes or edges in the build graph are filled in.

This is how all the modern build systems work: they interleave the
build phases with graph discovery (the "Build Systems à la Carte"
paper has details).


> But this is a problem for popular build systems like ninja.

At some point we will need to call a "popular" build system that
was designed for 30-year old hardware (that is, pre-SSD) "legacy".
Ninja author/maintainers are especially notorious for refusing
most further enhancements.


> It is also a problem for distributed build systems that need to know
> which files to move into a remote environment before building there.

I don't see how it's a problem unless you want to ship entire sub-
graphs to remote hosts.