2 posts tagged with "parallel builds"

The software development landscape is a nebulous. On one front, developers strive to craft innovative features at breakneck speed before requirements change. On another, security threats loom, constantly evolving to exploit vulnerabilities. In this environment, a robust and secure build process is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity as software supply chain attacks become more sophisticated.

This guide introduces the high-level designing a native C or C++ build process that prioritizes both speed and security.

Distributing the Build Work​

Imagine a factory with multiple assembly lines, each focused on a specific part of the product. This parallel approach increases efficiency and speeds up production. Similarly, in a build process, distributing work of various modules across multiple machines creates parallel build pipelines, leading to faster builds and improved scalability. This can be achieved through various means:

C++ grants developers immense power, but with it comes the greater responsibility of managing memory. Memory leaks and access violations can bring down even the most robust applications. To combat these issues, sanitizers like AddressSanitizer (ASan) and LeakSanitizer (LSan) are invaluable tools. When it comes to addressing security, this is only the tip of the iceberg; you are expected to do more but sanitizers are an approachable starting pointing.

Despite these obvious upsides 50% of developers don't leverage these tools, integrating them into the build process often raises concerns about increased build times. This blog post explores a strategy to leverage modern build tools and parallelization to achieve exceptional memory safety without sacrificing CI speed.