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Abstract

de> command with parallelism.</p><h2 id="9570">Benchmarks</h2><p id="dc98">Benchmarks conducted on four different repositories revealed that a hot mvnd execution, where the daemon is already running, can accelerate builds by up to 50% of builds that do not run tests or static analysis as this is the most common use-case among developers in our organization.</p><figure id="442c"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*xot8KoV94usih-4e"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h2 id="77be">Local vs CI server</h2><p id="ac6e">Using Maven Daemon significantly sped up our local builds, making our engineers’ daily iterations faster and more efficient. However, this solution wasn’t suitable for our CI environment with TeamCity. Since we don’t reuse TeamCity, there was no benefit to starting a daemon process in this context.</p><p id="3916">In response to this limitation, we will be exploring the possibility of reusing agents and investigating potential improvements in a different initiative to better optimize our CI environment.</p><h2 id="c57d">Adoption</h2><p id="8fb7">To ensure every Java team at Picnic could benefit from the increased speed of local builds using Maven Daemon, we created a comprehensive knowledge article outlining the steps and best practices. By sharing this detailed knowledge article, we ensured that all developers in our organization could easily adopt and benefit from using Maven Daemon, leading to faster build times and improved productivity.</p><p id="436d">Currently, we don’t have visibility in the adoption rate here, but we are looking into using OpenTelemetry Maven extensions to get more insights into this to better track and advocate</p><h1 id="aceb">Maven Build Cache</h1><p id="6a2a">One of the best ways to speed up builds is to do less. And the best way to do less is to eliminate duplicate or unnecessary work. Why should we want to rebuild and retest all modules in our project if I change a single test, or a small if-statement in a module no other module depends on? We can use a build cache to only execute Maven goals for modules that changed and modules that depend on these changes.</p><h2 id="f90a">How does it work</h2><p id="5cdc">The Maven Build Cache extension enhances the efficiency of large Maven projects by implementing the following set of features:</p><ol><li><b>Incremental Builds</b>: Only the modified parts of the project graph are rebuilt.</li><li><b>Subtree Support</b>: Allows isolated builds of specific parts in multi-module projects.</li><li><b>Version Normalization</b>: Facilitates version-agnostic caching.</li><li><b>Project State Restoration</b>: Avoids repeating expensive tasks like code generation by restoring previous states from the cache.</li></ol><figure id="5b07"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*ehx_WSQV_zw9e68p"><figcaption>The diagram shows that changes in a module (Module 2) lead to it and its dependents (Module 3) being rebuilt, while unchanged modules (Module 1 and Module 4) are retrieved from the cache.</figcaption></figure><h2 id="28f6">Local Build Cache</h2><p id="2678">When working locally, the Maven Build Cache stores the build output artifacts in a designated local cache directory. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how it operates:</p><ol><li><b>Initial Build:

</b>During the first build, Maven compiles the entire project as usual.
For each module, the build cache extension computes a unique hash based on the module’s inputs (source files, Maven configuration, dependencies, etc.).
The build outputs (e.g., compiled classes, packaged artifacts) are stored in the local cache directory with the computed key.</li><li><b>Subsequent Builds:
</b>Before building a module, Maven checks the local cache directory to see if there is a cached result for the module’s hash.
If a match is found, the cached outputs are restored, and Maven goals executed when the cache was constructed are now skipped.
If no match is found, Maven rebuilds the module, and the new outputs are cached for future use.</li><li><b>Cache Management:
</b>The local cache can be configured to limit its size and manage the retention of cached artifacts.
Policies can be defined to periodically clean up old or infrequently used cache entries, ensuring the cache directory remains manageable.</li><li><b>Key Generation:
</b>The unique key for each module is generated by hashing the module’s inputs. This includes source code files, project model (POM file), plugin configurations and parameters, and dependency versions and configurations.
By including all relevant inputs in the key, the build cache ensures that any change in the inputs results i

Options

n a new key, prompting a rebuild.</li></ol><p id="4903">The build cache uses hashing to generate unique keys for storing and restoring build results. Correctness is maximized by including all relevant files and functional plugin parameters, while reuse is enhanced by filtering non-essential files and minimizing controlled plugin parameters. Configuration involves balancing correctness and performance through an XML file, <code>buildinfo.xml</code>.</p><h2 id="88d2">Usage in CI</h2><p id="6966">In our CI process, we also leverage the Maven Build Cache solution to accelerate our CI builds. However, for CI, we employ <a href="https://maven.apache.org/extensions/maven-build-cache-extension/remote-cache.html">a remote cache</a> stored in an artifactory instead of using a local directory. In our case, cached artifacts are stored in Nexus. This approach has markedly increased the speed of our Java builds. Consequently, our builds finish sooner and build queues are shorter.</p><p id="d0a3">However, in certain situations, users need to perform a full build of their changes. To accommodate this, we introduced a TeamCity parameter called “Use Maven build cache” with the following options:</p><ul><li><code>true</code>: the cache is used</li><li><code>false</code>: the cache is not used</li><li><code>default</code>: the repository-level setting is applied</li></ul><figure id="51f5"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*cjBQGpXtPyo_8MeafHw1TA.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="76d0">It is good to note that we currently employ the cache only for builds that do not create production artifacts, as we wish to have these as ‘pure’ as possible. As such, we disable the cache for builds on default branches supporting continuous deployments, and in release builds.</p><h2 id="1253">Benchmarks</h2><p id="12d5">In the best-case scenario, the execution time of CI builds dropped by ~ 90% when execution of every module was skipped, this is how it was shown in the build logs:</p><div id="bdae"><pre>[INFO] Skipping plugin execution (cached): <span class="hljs-keyword">install</span>:<span class="hljs-keyword">install</span></pre></div><p id="72cd">Instead of 10 minutes 4 seconds, the build that was fully cached took only 1 minute 22 seconds. 😲</p><p id="fb1e">Of course, this is quite a rare case to run a build that has every module skipped. The average build time improvement across all Java repositories in Picnic is shown in the picture below. It is noticeable that build time dropped by 62% in general.</p><figure id="3fd7"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*m9KcQpIhbc66wTHDIvttPQ.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="97f1">For some repositories, the build time improvement was more noticeable than for others. Projects with many modules benefit more than projects with only a few modules. This can be seen in the chart below showing P75 build times. Highly modular projects see their build times drop from 10 to 5 minutes. Projects with a few modules only benefit little from this improvement.</p><figure id="8e53"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*Qp8AmIXK7M0xzbuc"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><h1 id="d1eb">Conclusion</h1><ol><li><b>Dramatic Build Time Reduction:

</b>Build times dropped from 12 minutes to 8 minutes in general. This significant improvement eliminates long waits, allowing developers to maintain focus and productivity.</li><li><b>Enhanced Developer Experience:
</b>Faster build times, especially for local builds, lead to fewer interruptions, enabling developers to stay in the zone and work more efficiently. This improvement has contributed to higher job satisfaction and overall happiness among our teams.</li><li><b>Increased Efficiency in CI Pipelines:
</b>Using the Maven Build Cache in our CI environment has sped up CI builds, reduced queue times, and made TeamCity agents available more quickly.</li></ol><p id="46a2">These improvements have significantly boosted developer morale and productivity. Reduced build times mean less context switching, quicker feedback, and a more enjoyable workflow.</p><p id="316d">Developers feel more empowered and efficient, resulting in higher-quality code and faster feature implementation.</p><p id="90d2">In summary, the integration of the Maven Build Cache extension and Maven Daemon has transformed our build process, making it faster and more efficient. We are excited to continue leveraging these tools to maintain and further improve our build processes, ensuring our developers have the best possible experience.</p><p id="0bd6">In collaboration with <b>Pieter Dirk Soels</b></p></article></body>

The soft truth about hard skills

What makes a skill useful to your long-term career?

My biggest fear growing up was that I would end up useless.

I couldn’t see why anyone would pay me, of all people, for doing things. I didn’t feel like I knew anything particularly useful. What if I wouldn’t be able to earn any money? What if I would end up a drifting outcast ?

Very rarely did I share these worries as a child, as I assumed people would laugh. That adults would find it funny, and other kids would think I’m weird. This gut feeling was probably spot on, given how people get called “entitled” for daring to voice hopes and fears about jobs.

What’s odd, though, is that traditional advice (suck it up, buckle down) hasn’t been particularly helpful. The economy’s been changing so fast, with jobs either materially changing or outright vanishing. It seems few people can count on doing what they do for a living today, the way they do it today, in ten years’ time.

Economic resilience is the term used for the capacity of an economy to resist a shock and rapidly recover to previous growth levels and above. I’m no economist, but it’s clear that improving personal economic resilience is incredibly important to anyone with decades of work ahead of them.

And if ‘just doing what you’re told’ isn’t helping you achieve economic resilience, the only thing left is finding a way to keep getting better. Since nobody wants to get better at things they hate, this leaves us with finding what’s both fun for you and that adds long-lasting value to others.

Just look at Warren Buffet, who can do whatever he likes, and who chooses to read 500 pages a day. Like interest, he says, knowledge compounds. The more you’ll learn, the more you’ll earn.

Whether those earning come from a job or a business hardly matters. Either way, economic resilience is very much about gaining new skills that you can enjoy practicing.

Here’s the problem with new: people don’t like new. In fact, most people hate new. New is uncomfortable. New means you’re back to your first day of school. New means you’ll probably fail at first, except baby steps are for babies, and you’re an adult who’s actually seen things and done stuff.

No, better than new is Like-New.

Like-New is really stuff you kind of know, but in a shiny wrapper. It’s tweaking your knowledge base at the margin. It feels good, you’re reading and absorbing, but it doesn’t accumulate to any meaningful shift in abilities. If it’s December and what you can do looks a lot like what you could do back in January — that’s a lot of Like-New learning.

One way to think about Like-New skills, is by imagining a factory floor. A guy working one machine can learn to operate a different one. But most of the value in machine-operating skills is conditional on the existence of a factory.

Like-New doesn’t build economic resilience.

The best investment in yourself is learning how to pick up new, genuinely new, skills. Which ones though?

For starters, if you try something and it makes you absolutely miserable, just stop. No matter the prestige, it just isn’t for you. Just make sure it’s not fear or embarrassment that’s keeping you from trying.

Still, with so many options, you still need a way to tell what makes a skill worthy of your time. I believe it boils down to three criteria a skill needs to meet:

1. It should be rare

This is purely due to supply and demand. A market that’s over-supplied will inevitably value a service less. Of course, rarity is always relative to demand: there aren’t that many unicycle riders out there, but the skill doesn’t command an explosive pay because no one but circuses needs it.

2. It should be impactful

There are lots of things you can learn to do that make your personal life better. Skills like cooking and cleaning, for example, can make a huge positive impact on your personal well-being.

But for the purposes of economic resilience, it matters how much of an impact a skill can make on other people’s lives. Sometimes it’s the same things you like to do anyhow, just applied differently: Writing in your private diary, you’re only influencing yourself; writing for an audience, the very same thoughts can influence many.

3. It should be evidently transferable

It’s easy to see why a transferable skill would be valuable, since it doesn’t bind you to a specific setting. Except, people often use the same words to describe completely different things, and over time we begin to question what that word actually means.

For example, Bob and Mary might both say they’re in sales, except Mary sells software solutions to large corporations and Bob sells vegan sushi at a downtown popup.

The easiest way for two people to agree that they think of a skill similarly is through social proof. If Bob points to securing a corporate client for his veggie rolls, it established common grounds with Mary.

Rare. Impactful. Evidently Transferable. That’s the acid test.