Element
Maintain
The build orchestrator with Rhai scripting and deterministic output.
Maintain
Maintain is the build orchestrator for Code Editor Land. It coordinates Rest, Output, SideCar, and every other build-time Element into a single reproducible pipeline. Build logic is written in Rhai scripts, not shell scripts, and every configuration is validated at compile time.
The Problem
Build pipelines that depend on environment variables, shell conditionals, and platform-specific scripts become impossible to debug. A build passes on one machine and fails on another because of a missing $PATH entry or a difference in how sed handles newlines on macOS versus Linux. VS Code’s build system spans Gulp tasks, shell scripts, and Node.js scripts scattered across dozens of files. Reproducing a failure requires replicating the exact environment, which is rarely documented.
How Maintain Eliminates It
Maintain replaces shell scripts with Rhai, an embedded scripting language designed for Rust applications. Rhai scripts are sandboxed, deterministic, and cross-platform by design. They cannot access the file system, network, or environment variables unless explicitly granted permission through Maintain’s capability system.
Build configurations are Rust structs validated at compile time. A typo in a configuration key fails the build before any artifact is produced, not after twenty minutes of compilation.
Maintain orchestrates the full pipeline: Rest compiles TypeScript, Output stores artifacts, SideCar selects binaries. Each step receives typed inputs and produces typed outputs. If a step fails, the error message identifies the exact input that caused the failure.
What You Experience
You run a single command and the build either succeeds or fails with a clear, actionable error. The same command produces the same result on macOS, Linux, and Windows. No environment-specific workarounds. No “works on my machine” mysteries.
Build scripts are readable. Rhai’s syntax is close to Rust, so anyone who can read the application code can read the build logic.
Key Technologies
Rust, Rhai Scripting, Compile-Time Configuration Validation, Deterministic Orchestration, Capability-Based Sandboxing.