SourceFS: A 2h+ Android build becomes a 15m task with a virtual filesystem

Summary

SourceFS - a high-performance virtual filesystem that builds Android 9× faster, cuts compute costs by 14×, and reduces disk usage by 83× — unlocking a new level of developer productivity.Slow Builds and Code CheckoutsToday's connected devices are powered by some of the largest codebases ever developed.The latest Linux kernel has 40 Million lines of code while the Android AOSP has 140M+, and this is just the foundation. Real-world device codebases are far larger – add the code for hardware support, custom features, services, additional OSs and a smartphone quickly tops 200M lines of code, while an Electric Vehicle exceeds 500M. And these codebases continue to grow throughout a device’s lifetime, with each software update.Every code checkout pulls millions of files and hundreds of GB, every build runs hundreds of thousands of steps. And because dependency graphs at this scale are imperfect, even a small change can trigger a massive rebuild or, worse, produce an incorrect result. The impact: hours of developer time lost every day and $ millions wasted on ever increasing CI compute requirements — or more often, configurations that are not tested due to compute constraints.The Source File System (SourceFS)Not another build system. Meet SourceFS – a high-performance virtual file system that delivers unparalleled speedups when checking out and building the Android codebase. It integrates seamlessly into your existing developer workflows and CI, with near-zero migration overhead, and dramatically lowers compute costs. Here’s how it works.‍At its core, SourceFS virtualizes everything, materializes on demand, and does all of this transparently — so neither you nor the rest of the system ever notice it.‍SourceFS accelerates code checkouts by over 10×. It does this by creating a virtual file representation of the entire codebase at checkout and materializing files on demand, instantly, the moment you need them. These virtual files look and behave just like real ones, with the c...