A guide to Gatsby incremental builds

Static websites, known for their speed, security, and scalability, traditionally faced the challenge of lengthy build times due to monolithic builds. This issue, known as the O(n) problem, results in longer build times as a site's size increases, impacting efficiency, especially for sites with frequent content updates. Gatsby Cloud addresses this by introducing incremental builds, allowing only the affected parts of a site to be rebuilt when changes occur, reducing build times significantly. This approach transforms the O(n) problem into an O(1) situation, where the number of pages does not affect build time. Gatsby Cloud, optimized for Gatsby-built sites, enables these faster builds through compatibility with various CMS platforms and offers a public beta for users to experience these improvements. While incremental builds currently focus on content changes, Gatsby plans to extend support to code changes, further enhancing the developer experience and efficiency in managing static sites.