An interview on Eclipse SDV Hephaestus

We spoke with Gunther Bauer and Torsten Rosenbauer from ZF (this year’s SDV Hackathon hosts) about Eclipse SDV Hephaestus, a new modular, AI-powered toolchain that standardises build systems, development environments, automation workflows, and engineering tools across Eclipse SDV projects.

What inspired the creation of the project?

Within Eclipse SDV, many projects independently developed their own build systems, CI/CD pipelines, development environments, and tooling integrations. This duplication created unnecessary engineering effort and made cross-project integration more difficult. To address this problem statement, ZF decided to initiate a new project, shape its direction, and contribute a project lead. Hephaestus was created to centralise these non-differentiating concerns by providing a reusable and standardised development toolchain, allowing projects to focus on domain-specific functionality rather than infrastructure engineering. The project builds on proven approaches from the Eclipse S-CORE ecosystem and aligns them with broader SDV community requirements.

Why is it called “Hephaestus”?

The name Hephaestus reflects the project’s role within the software engineering ecosystem. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the master craftsman responsible for creating the tools and technologies used by gods and heroes. In a similar way, Hephaestus provides a standardised development toolchain that enables teams to build, test, and maintain software in a consistent and efficient manner.

For readers who may be hearing about Hephaestus for the first time, how would you describe the project in one sentence? 

Eclipse SDV Hephaestus is a modular, AI-powered toolchain that standardises build systems, development environments, automation workflows, and engineering tooling across Eclipse SDV projects.

Why does the Eclipse SDV ecosystem need a common toolchain?

Without a common toolchain, each project must independently solve the same infrastructure challenges, including build orchestration, dependency management, environment provisioning, and CI/CD integration. A shared toolchain reduces duplication, improves internal interoperability, and significantly lowers the effort required to integrate components from multiple SDV projects into larger solutions.

How does Hephaestus differ from a software framework or middleware?

Hephaestus is not a software framework or middleware layer. Instead, it provides the engineering infrastructure required to develop, build, test, and maintain such systems. It focuses on software lifecycle concerns, including build automation, dependency management, environment provisioning, documentation workflows, and CI/CD integration, rather than application-level functionality.

How does Hephaestus fit into the broader Eclipse SDV ecosystem?

Hephaestus serves as a foundational enablement project within Eclipse SDV. It generalises proven tooling concepts from the Eclipse S-CORE project and makes them available to the broader ecosystem. By providing standardised workflows and engineering practices, it simplifies collaboration and integration across SDV projects while supporting a modular adoption model.

Why was Bazel chosen as the initial build system?

Bazel supports multiple programming languages, including C/C++, Rust, and Python. Eclipse S-CORE selected Bazel because it provides hermetic, reproducible builds across different programming languages and platforms. It also enables a standardised, scalable build infrastructure with strong dependency management, cross-compilation support, and efficient CI through remote caching. Since Hephaestus is designed to support both Eclipse S-CORE and other Eclipse projects, Bazel was chosen as the underlying build system.

Which kinds of projects are expected to adopt Hephaestus?

Hephaestus primarily targets automotive edge software projects within the Eclipse SDV ecosystem. Initial adopters include Eclipse OpenSOVD and Eclipse Automotive API Framework, while Eclipse S-CORE provides the technical foundation and reference implementation. Although the initial focus is on edge software development, the project is exploring synergies with cloud-native SDV solutions where common tooling and engineering requirements overlap.

What aspects of the project are you most proud of since its launch?

The most rewarding aspect has been the strong collaboration across multiple Eclipse SDV projects and the positive response from the community to the goal of reducing duplicated engineering effort. We are particularly encouraged by the interest in establishing common standards for build infrastructure, development environments, and qualification-ready engineering workflows that can benefit the entire SDV ecosystem.