Announcing Remote Build Execution

Remote Build Execution (RBE) is a technique aimed at speeding up development by offloading computation tasks from the local machine to a network of worker machines, which can be particularly beneficial for large codebases with extensive build and test graphs. Aspect has integrated RBE into its Workflows platform on both GCP and AWS, leveraging open-source tools like Buildbarn for execution and cache management to enhance performance and scalability. While RBE can significantly reduce build times for complex projects, Aspect argues that it should be considered a last resort due to potentially high costs and complexity, with a preference for "Minimal Execution" strategies that maximize cache efficiency. Aspect's RBE is tailored for large organizations like Airtable, where parallelism and remote execution provide substantial benefits, but for smaller codebases or teams, local execution might be more cost-effective. The company emphasizes the importance of a well-configured Bazel environment and offers trials to help teams assess the potential advantages of RBE in optimizing their workflow.