layout: documentation title: Installing Bazel

Installing Bazel

Supported platforms:

For other platforms, you can try to compile from source.

Required Java version:

  • Java JDK 8 or later (JDK 7 is still supported but deprecated).

Extras:

For more information on using Bazel, see Getting started.

Ubuntu

Install Bazel on Ubuntu using one of the following methods:

Using Bazel custom APT repository (recommended)

1. Install JDK 8

If you are running Ubuntu Wily (15.10), you can skip this step. But for Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS) users, since OpenJDK 8 is not available on Trusty, please install Oracle JDK 8:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Note: You might need to sudo apt-get install software-properties-common if you don't have the add-apt-repository command. See here.

2. Add Bazel distribution URI as a package source (one time setup)

$ echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-apt stable jdk1.8" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bazel.list
$ curl https://bazel.build/bazel-release.pub.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

If you want to use the JDK 7, please replace jdk1.8 with jdk1.7 and if you want to install the testing version of Bazel, replace stable with testing.

3. Install and update Bazel

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bazel

Once installed, you can upgrade to newer version of Bazel with:

$ sudo apt-get upgrade bazel

Install with Installer

We provide binary installers on our GitHub releases page

The installer only contains Bazel binary, some additional libraries are required to be installed on the machine to work.

1. Install JDK 8

Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS). OpenJDK 8 is not available on Trusty. To install Oracle JDK 8:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Note: You might need to sudo apt-get install software-properties-common if you don't have the add-apt-repository command. See here.

Ubuntu Wily (15.10). To install OpenJDK 8:

$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

2. Install other required packages

$ sudo apt-get install pkg-config zip g++ zlib1g-dev unzip

3. Download Bazel

Download the Bazel installer for your operating system.

4. Run the installer

Run the installer:

The --user flag installs Bazel to the $HOME/bin directory on your system and sets the .bazelrc path to $HOME/.bazelrc. Use the --help command to see additional installation options.

5. Set up your environment

If you ran the Bazel installer with the --user flag as above, the Bazel executable is installed in your $HOME/bin directory. It's a good idea to add this directory to your default paths, as follows:

$ export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin"

You can also add this command to your ~/.bashrc file.

Mac OS X

Install Bazel on Mac OS X using one of the following methods:

Install using Homebrew

1. Install JDK 8

JDK 8 can be downloaded from Oracle's JDK Page. Look for “Mac OS X x64” under “Java SE Development Kit”. This will download a DMG image with an install wizard.

2. Install Homebrew on Mac OS X (one time setup)

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

3. Install Bazel Homebrew Package

$ brew install bazel

You are all set. You can confirm Bazel is installed successfully by running bazel version.

You can later upgrade to newer version of Bazel with brew upgrade bazel.

Install with installer

We provide binary installers on our GitHub releases page

The installer only contains Bazel binary, some additional libraries are required to be installed on the machine to work.

1. Install JDK 8

JDK 8 can be downloaded from Oracle's JDK Page. Look for “Mac OS X x64” under “Java SE Development Kit”. This will download a DMG image with an install wizard.

2. Install XCode command line tools

Xcode can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Site, which will redirect to the App Store.

For objc_* and ios_* rule support, you must have Xcode 6.1 or later with iOS SDK 8.1 installed on your system.

Once XCode is installed you can trigger signing the license with the following command:

$ sudo gcc --version

3. Download Bazel

Download the Bazel installer for your operating system.

4. Run the installer

Run the installer:

The --user flag installs Bazel to the $HOME/bin directory on your system and sets the .bazelrc path to $HOME/.bazelrc. Use the --help command to see additional installation options.

5. Set up your environment

If you ran the Bazel installer with the --user flag as above, the Bazel executable is installed in your $HOME/bin directory. It's a good idea to add this directory to your default paths, as follows:

$ export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin"

You can also add this command to your ~/.bashrc file.

You are all set. You can confirm Bazel is installed successfully by running bazel version.

Windows

Windows support is highly experimental. Known issues are marked with label “Windows” on GitHub issues.

We currently support only 64 bit Windows 7 or higher and we compile Bazel as a MSYS2 binary.

Install Bazel on Windows using one of the following methods:

Install on Windows using Chocolatey

You can install the unofficial package using the chocolatey package manager:

choco install bazel

This will install the latest available version of bazel, and dependencies.

This package is experimental; please provide feedback to @petemounce in GitHub issue tracker. See the Chocolatey installation and package maintenance guide for more information.

Download a precompiled binary

We provide binary versions on our GitHub releases page

This is merely the Bazel binary. You'll need additional software (e.g. msys2 shell of the right version) and some setup in your environment to run Bazel. See these requirements on our Windows page.

Compiling from source

The standard way of compiling a release version of Bazel from source is to use a distribution archive. Download bazel-<VERSION>-dist.zip from the release page for the desired version. We recommend to also verify the signature made by our release key 48457EE0.

Unzip the archive and call bash ./compile.sh; this will create a bazel binary in output/bazel. This binary is self-contained, so it can be copied to a directory on the PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin) or used in-place.

###Known issues when compiling from source

On Windows:

  • version 0.4.4 and below: compile.sh may fail right after start with an error like this:

    File not found - *.jar
    no error prone jar
    

    Workaround is to run this (and add it to your ~/.bashrc):

    export PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:$PATH"
    
  • version 0.4.3 and below: compile.sh may fail fairly early with many Java compilation errors. The errors look similar to:

    C:\...\bazel_VR1HFY7x\src\com\google\devtools\build\lib\remote\ExecuteServiceGrpc.java:11: error: package io.grpc.stub does not exist
    import static io.grpc.stub.ServerCalls.asyncUnaryCall;
                              ^
    

    This is caused by a bug in one of the bootstrap scripts (scripts/bootstrap/compile.sh). Manually apply this one-line fix if you want to build Bazel purely from source (without using an existing Bazel binary): 5402993a5e9065984a42eca2132ec56ca3aa456f.

  • version 0.3.2 and below: github issue #1919

Using Bazel with JDK 7 (deprecated)

Bazel version 0.1.0 runs without any change with JDK 7. However, future version will stop supporting JDK 7 when our CI cannot build for it anymore. The installer for JDK 7 for Bazel versions after 0.1.0 is labeled

If you wish to use JDK 7, follow the same steps as for JDK 8 but with the jdk7 installer or using a different APT repository as described here.

Getting bash completion

Bazel comes with a bash completion script, which the installer copies into the bin directory. If you ran the installer with --user, this will be $HOME/.bazel/bin. If you ran the installer as root, this will be /usr/local/bazel/bin.

Copy the bazel-complete.bash script to your completion folder (/etc/bash_completion.d directory under Ubuntu). If you don't have a completion folder, you can copy it wherever suits you and insert source /path/to/bazel-complete.bash in your ~/.bashrc file (under OS X, put it in your ~/.bash_profile file).

If you built Bazel from source, the bash completion target is in the //scripts package:

  1. Build it with Bazel: bazel build //scripts:bazel-complete.bash.
  2. Copy the script bazel-bin/scripts/bazel-complete.bash to one of the locations described above.

Getting zsh completion

Bazel also comes with a zsh completion script. To install it:

  1. Add this script to a directory on your $fpath:

    fpath[1,0]=~/.zsh/completion/
    mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completion/
    cp scripts/zsh_completion/_bazel ~/.zsh/completion
    

    You may have to call rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit the first time to make it work.

  2. Optionally, add the following to your .zshrc.

    # This way the completion script does not have to parse Bazel's options
    # repeatedly.  The directory in cache-path must be created manually.
    zstyle ':completion:*' use-cache on
    zstyle ':completion:*' cache-path ~/.zsh/cache