### The Windows Container Nightmare: Massive Image Sizes and Timeouts!
Frustration, annoyance, and a lot of wasted time – that’s what comes to mind when dealing with Microsoft Windows. As a developer, you’re always looking for the best tools to get the job done efficiently, and Windows can make that a real challenge. This time Google is also to blame. Take, for example, a VStools Windows.

### Google Cloud NAT is just 3 gcloud commands and a shell script
The original requirement: No public IP address. When you instantiate a virtual machine on Google Cloud, you have the option of giving it a public IP address in addition to its private IP address. It seems perfectly reasonable to not give the VM a public IP if it is never expected to be accessed from.

### AWS throttles network bandwidth on cheaper instances
“Why is the git clone taking over three hours?” We have a setup in which the build farm needs to clone the latest source code once a week per repository for ~30 git repositories. All but two are expected to complete within 10 minutes. The “one clone per week” is part of a workflow.

### Remote builds for Open Source developers
Remote work is the new normal. Remote work is not a new concept; the COVID-19 pandemic just pushed this requirement front-and-center for ALL the developers and their employers. Crave, our build acceleration tool, was designed to provide access to the shared build and test infrastructure for the developers whether they work in-office or remotely.

### Evolution of a build system
It was simple in the beginning. Really. About 10 years ago, I started hacking together a cross-platform Google Voice client. I didn’t think too much about my build system at that time — I just followed what I saw others did and used an IDE to develop, debug, and test. When it was time to automate.