In this episode, we talk to ThoughtWorks developer Florian Sellmayr about LambdaCD, an open source library for building build pipelines as code, written in Clojure.

Florian shares with us the problems he has faced with traditional continuous integration systems, for example Jenkins. Complex continuous delivery setups that were hard to understand, brittle and error prone served as his motivation to find and implement a better way. In our interview, Florian makes a passionate case for building your pipelines as code, like you build your microservices.

LambdaCD makes it simple to develop, test, deploy and run build pipelines just like any other application, using such powerful tools like a functional programming language, version control, tests and refactoring. With pipelines being just regular Clojure applications, the library supports their development by providing auxiliary tooling, like a user interface or implementations of common build steps.

Finally, Florian outlines how the project evolved from a thought experiment into a library under active use and development and gives hints for upcoming contributors that want to help in shaping LambdaCD’s future.



Links mentioned in the show: