this is my friend birdie cat

You shall be unsilenced, but IM WATCHIN YOU BUDDY

Don't need any more of that I'm already dealing with enough of it today as is

Context: multiple git repositories in different languages building various front-end and back-end projects. Some repos build a single app, others build multiple distinct targets. Some builds/apps can be configured by editing config files. Build processes are one or more commands.

What I want: a unified way to build and run these projects, so that someone familiar with our conventions can, without reading documentation specific to the repo:

• figure out which apps exist in a given repo
• build any of them (with a single command)
• run any of them (with a single command)
• easily configure them for common scenarios (e.g. “use the backend service that is running on a shared server” vs. “use the backend service I have running locally on a known port”)

In my mind this seems like maybe what Bazel can do. But is it? The docs are slightly inscrutable at a casual glance (everything is defined in terms of everything else) and People I Trust have said “hmm maybe don’t” when I mentioned I was looking at Bazel.

Any opinions out there?

Edit: I should add that I want this to be nonintrusive. I want to add support for “a better way” without breaking any existing tools or processes, so that this can be a gradual migration to “see I told you this was easier”.

So I guess PSN just... Randomly purges your cloud save data if you don't play for a year? B/c finals got so fucking stressful I tried to fall back into my old disassociation spiral by playing Dark Cloud 2 but my 300 hour save game is just... Gone? So thanks I guess for not letting me disassociate before finals but also fuck you I was so close to finishing all the spheda courses.

Oh.

Oh ho.

Oh ho ho ho ho.

It wasn't random. It was so much worse than random.

See, I bought my copy of Dark Cloud 2 before the current iteration of PlayStation Network, when you just paid for a digital copy of a classic game and then that was your game. You know, the way ownership works.

They they introduced PlayStation Network Essentials, a change to the pricing structure of their subscription plan designed to deliver a comically small amount of additional content in exchange for jacking up their subscription prices.

And Dark Cloud 2? Well Dark Cloud 2 is part of their essentials tier. So now, my pre Essentials save data is locked behind a paywall. I could restore it, you see, but I would need to pay their price to have access to my own user account's cloud data, because the game is part of that subscription tier now even though I bought it before that tier existed.

This aggression will not stand.