Compiling Bazel

This file contains instructions for building and running Bazel.

System Requirements

Supported platforms:

  • Ubuntu Linux
  • Mac OS X

Java:

  • Java JDK 8 or later

Getting Bazel

  1. Clone the Bazel repo from GitHub:

     $ cd $HOME
 $ git clone https://github.com/google/bazel/

Building Bazel

Building Bazel on Ubuntu

To build Bazel on Ubuntu:

  1. Install JDK 8:

  • On Ubuntu Trusty (14.04LTS), no OpenJDK 8 is available and the fastest way is to install the Oracle JDK 8:

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

  • On Ubuntu Utopic (14.10):

        $ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

  1. Install required packages:

     $ sudo apt-get install libarchive-dev pkg-config

  2. Build Bazel:

     $ cd bazel
 $ ./compile.sh

Building Bazel on OS X

Using Bazel on Mac OS X requires:

  • The Xcode command line tools. Xcode can be downloaded from Apple's developer site.
  • MacPorts or Homebrew for installing required packages.
  • An installation of JDK 8.
  • (optional) For objc_* and ios_* rule support: An installed copy of Xcode 6.1 or later with iOS SDK 8.1.

To build Bazel on Mac OS X:

  1. Install required packages:

     $ port install protobuf-cpp libarchive

    or

     $ brew install protobuf libarchive

  2. Build Bazel:

     $ cd bazel
 $ ./compile.sh

  3. Run it

     $ ./output/bazel help

Running Bazel

The Bazel executable is located at output/bazel, under the source tree root.

You must run Bazel from within source code tree, which is properly configured for use with Bazel. We call such a tree a workspace directory. Bazel provides a default workspace directory with sample BUILD files and source code in base_workspace. The default workspace contains files and directories that must be present in order for Bazel to work. If you want to build from source outside the default workspace directory, copy the entire base_workspace directory to the new location before adding your BUILD and source files.

Build a sample Java application:

    $ cp -R $HOME/bazel/base_workspace $HOME/my_workspace
    $ cd $HOME/my_workspace
    $ $HOME/bazel/output/bazel build //examples/java-native/src/main/java/com/example/myproject:hello-world

The build output is located in $HOME/my_workspace/bazel-bin/examples/java-native/src/main/java/com/example/myproject/.

Run the sample application:

$ $HOME/my_workspace/bazel-bin/examples/java-native/src/main/java/com/example/myproject/hello-world

For more information, see Getting started.