Really? I miss Brazil and version sets regularly and often think about reimplementing the parts I find valuable on top of an existing package system.
Having self contained workspaces with all dependencies in any language, fine grained ability to replace any package with a local build, and the simplicity of package config (for most languages) was awesome.
Having to use _n_ language dependent build systems without interface pinning or reproducible builds since leaving sucked, imho. Checking out a package and running `bb` to get an artifact was just so satisfying.
I would check out <https://nixos.org/> if you're looking for a similar experience to Brazil.
My own opinion is that the Brazil had far too many running parts. I didn't like that reproducibility required the tool interacting with 3-4 different services, and I'm much more a fan of having the source code repository act as a single source of truth for reproducibility. Plus, using Brazil meant you had to use their entire tech stack, where GitLab/GitHub beat them by far.
I’ve looked into Nix at the previous company I worked for for exactly those reasons. I spent a bunch of time writing minimal dependency builders and artifact reuse for a maven monorepo where I had to tread carefully and not break the build. Nix seemed like a great way to get inter-repo dependent builds and dependency modeling.
When I taught new hires about Brazil, the common response was to revile in horror that they’d have to learn (not their favorite language specific build tool). It didn’t take long, however, for most people to see its benefits and then get past that initial bias.
It cuts both ways though. Some people are too invested in Brazil to embrace any improvements other "favorite language specific build tools" have made in the last 10? years. So it stagnates. Python support was bad, but bearable mainly due to the herculean efforts of one guy.
Thank you, I knew people hate on Bolsonaro and the like and that the elections there are coming this weekend but that shouldn't be enough reason to want an entire country to "be gone". Suffice is to say that I was confused.
I was confounded by Brazil for my first 3-4 years of working with it. The lightbulb clicked on just as I was ready to move on and at my next job, I missed Brazil terribly (maybe it was just Stockholm syndrome).
I eventually boomeranged back to Amazon and have found the middle ground. When used right, Brazil solves a lot of problems and day-to-day I enjoy working with it much more than not. The trouble is that almost all teams don't know how to use it and tie themselves up in knots of their own making. Third party software is also a problem. I hope Peru comes through, but so far I haven't worked with it, for good or for bad.
