layout: documentation title: Installing Bazel

Installing Bazel

System Requirements

Supported platforms:

  • Ubuntu Linux (Wily 15.10 and Trusty 14.04 LTS)
  • Mac OS X

Java:

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

Windows Support

Install dependencies

Ubuntu

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 required packages

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

Mac OS X

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 the license signature with the following command:

$ sudo gcc --version

Download Bazel

Download the Bazel installer for your operating system.

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.

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.

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 ./install-<em>version</em>-<em>os</em>-<b>jdk7</b>.sh. If you wish to use JDK 7, follow the same steps as for JDK 8 but with the jdk7 installer.

Getting bash completion

Bazel comes with a bash completion script. To install it:

  1. Build it with Bazel: bazel build //scripts:bazel-complete.bash.
  2. Copy the script bazel-bin/scripts/bazel-complete.bash 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 simply insert source /path/to/bazel-complete.bash in your ~/.bashrc file (under OS X, put it in your ~/.bash_profile file).

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

  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

Compiling from source

If you would like to build Bazel from source, clone the source from GitHub and run ./compile.sh to build it:

$ git clone https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel.git
$ cd bazel
$ ./compile.sh

This will create a bazel binary in bazel-bin/src/bazel.

Check our continuous integration for the current status of the build.

For more information on using Bazel, see Getting started.