Scaling CI/CD for Monorepos with Ben Poland from Faire

About Ben Poland:

Ben is a Staff Platform Engineer at Faire, currently focused on CI/CD and Developer Productivity. He has over 15 years of experience spanning virtual and cloud infrastructure, DevOps, DevEx, and lots more. He lives in Waterloo (Canada) with his wife, 2 kids (7 and 9), and their black shih-poo (15).

Ben Poland on LinkedIn

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Monorepos and Developer Experience
02:25 Understanding Developer Experience at Faire
04:49 The Shift to Monorepos: Rationale and Challenges
07:41 CI/CD Challenges in Monorepos
10:15 Kubernetes for CI: Benefits and Use Cases
13:01 Best Practices for Managing Monorepos
15:56 Dependency Management in Monorepos
18:48 Metrics and Maintenance in CI/CD
21:29 Future of Developer Experience and Tools

Summary
In this episode, Ankit Jain interviews Ben Poland, a staff platform engineer at Faire, to discuss the intricacies of managing monorepos and enhancing developer experience. Ben explores the rationale behind adopting monorepos, the challenges faced, and the solutions implemented, particularly focusing on CI/CD processes using Kubernetes and Gradle. He also shares insights on dependency management, metrics for monitoring developer productivity, and the future of developer experience in software engineering.

Keywords
Monorepos, developer experience, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Gradle, dependency management, observability, build tools, software engineering, DevOps


Takeaways

• Monorepos can simplify dependency management across multiple projects.

• Developer experience is crucial for retaining talent in tech companies.

• Kubernetes provides scalability and consistency for CI/CD processes.

• Gradle's task avoidance is essential for efficient CI in monorepos.

• Breaking down CI into smaller pipelines improves developer feedback loops.

• Dependency graphs are vital for maintaining clean codebases in monorepos.

• Metrics like build times and lead times help assess developer productivity.

• Empowering developers with tools and data enhances their autonomy.

• Observability in CI/CD is an area needing improvement.

• Continuous improvement is key in developer experience and CI/CD processes.