Bazel offers several compelling advantages for building Angular applications, making it a strong candidate for consideration in modern development environments, especially for large-scale or enterprise-level projects. Here are the key reasons to use Bazel for Angular builds:
1. Incremental Builds
Bazel excels in handling incremental builds, which means it only rebuilds parts of the application that have changed, rather than rebuilding the entire application. This can significantly reduce build times, making the development process faster and more efficient[1][3][5][9].
2. Scalability
Bazel is designed to scale very well with large codebases and can handle projects with hundreds of thousands of source files across multiple repositories. This makes it particularly suitable for enterprise applications or projects that expect to grow significantly over time[2][11].
3. Multi-language Support
Bazel supports building projects that use multiple languages, making it an ideal choice for full-stack development environments. This is particularly useful for organizations that manage both frontend and backend development within the same project[2][6][11].
4. Remote and Parallel Builds
Bazel can distribute builds across multiple machines, allowing for parallel execution of build tasks. This not only speeds up the build process but also leverages cloud resources effectively, which can be a significant advantage for teams with access to cloud computing resources[9][11].
5. Cache Efficiency
Bazel's caching mechanisms are highly efficient. It caches previous builds and intelligently determines which parts of the project need to be rebuilt based on changes. This results in faster subsequent builds and tests, as only changed elements are processed[2][11].
6. Reproducibility
Bazel builds are reproducible, meaning that a build performed on one machine will produce the same output on another machine, given the same inputs. This is crucial for minimizing "works on my machine" issues and is beneficial for continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) environments[6][11].
7. Integration with Angular CLI
Bazel integrates with the Angular CLI, allowing developers to use familiar commands and workflows while benefiting from Bazel's performance improvements. This integration helps in easing the learning curve associated with adopting a new build tool[2][7].
