Simple problems require simple solutions. If Makefile, NPM run, or Rake gets the job done, stick with it. That's great.
The problem that Dagger and similar efforts solve is for pipelines at scale, whether that's a sea of microservices maintained by an armada of teams (which never work the same) or your massive pipelines that should be decomposed into a more atomic pipeline that fed into one.
I believe the latter is a big productivity hurdle even without org-scale. My release pipeline runs for 25min with a team <5 because it's multi-staged (testing pyramid) and includes end-to-end tests. I love my pipeline because it makes me feel safe releasing my software upon success.
However, god forbid it fails with a non-obvious error of 20 minutes into exec. Lack of portability (Hi GHA vendor lock-in) and reproducibility (local-run = impossible) will make this feedback-loop hell.
Now, wiseguys might tell me that pipelines shouldn't run for multiple minutes and only unit tests blah. That's divorced from reality. This sentiment won't not solve automation problems and won't optimize for velocity. It merely throws it over the fence to somebody else. If you have "the luxury" a QE/QA/Release team which I feel bad for.
So the question to ask yourself is: how do I know I have outgrown `go run cmd/ci/main.go`?
The problem that Dagger and similar efforts solve is for pipelines at scale, whether that's a sea of microservices maintained by an armada of teams (which never work the same) or your massive pipelines that should be decomposed into a more atomic pipeline that fed into one.
I believe the latter is a big productivity hurdle even without org-scale. My release pipeline runs for 25min with a team <5 because it's multi-staged (testing pyramid) and includes end-to-end tests. I love my pipeline because it makes me feel safe releasing my software upon success.
However, god forbid it fails with a non-obvious error of 20 minutes into exec. Lack of portability (Hi GHA vendor lock-in) and reproducibility (local-run = impossible) will make this feedback-loop hell.
Now, wiseguys might tell me that pipelines shouldn't run for multiple minutes and only unit tests blah. That's divorced from reality. This sentiment won't not solve automation problems and won't optimize for velocity. It merely throws it over the fence to somebody else. If you have "the luxury" a QE/QA/Release team which I feel bad for.
So the question to ask yourself is: how do I know I have outgrown `go run cmd/ci/main.go`?