layout: documentation title: Compiling Bazel from Source

Compiling Bazel from Source (bootstrapping)

You can build Bazel from source without using an existing Bazel binary.

1. Install the prerequisites

Debian-based Unix systems

To compile Bazel on Debian-based systems such as Ubuntu or Debian, ensure that JDK 8, Python, bash, zip, and the usual C++ build toolchain components are installed on your system.

For example, you can install them using the following command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential openjdk-8-jdk python zip

Windows

To compile Bazel on Windows, install the following supporting software:

  • MSYS2 shell

  • The required MSYS2 packages. Run the following command in the MSYS2 shell:

    pacman -Syu zip unzip

  • The Visual C++ compiler. Install the Visual C++ compiler either as part of Visual Studio 2015 or newer, or by installing the latest Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017.

  • JDK 8. You must install version 8 of the JDK. Versions other than 8 are not supported.

  • Python. Versions 2 and 3 are supported. You must install the Windows-native version (downloadable from https://www.python.org). Versions installed via pacman in MSYS2 will not work.

2. Download and unpack Bazel's distribution archive.

Download bazel-<version>-dist.zip from the release page.

Note: There is a single, architecture-independent distribution archive. There are no architecture-specific or OS-specific distribution archives.

We recommend to also verify the signature made by our release key 48457EE0.

The distribution archive contains generated files in addition to the versioned sources, so this step cannot be short cut by checking out the source tree.

3. Bootstrap Bazel

Unix-like systems

On Unix-like systems such as Ubuntu or macOS, do the following:

  1. Open a shell or Terminal window.

  2. Change into the directory where you unpacked the distribution archive.

  3. Run the compilation script: bash ./compile.sh.

The compiled output is placed into output/bazel. This is a self-contained Bazel binary, without an embedded JDK. You can copy it to a directory in the PATH variable (such as /usr/local/bin on Linux) or use it in-place.

Windows

  1. Open the MSYS2 shell.

  2. Set the following environment variables:

    • BAZEL_VS or BAZEL_VC: Set to the path to the Visual Studio directory or to the Visual C++ directory, respectively. Setting one of them is enough.

    • BAZEL_SH: Set to the path of the MSYS2 bash.exe.

      Do not set this to C:\Windows\System32\bash.exe. (You have that file if you installed Windows Subsystem for Linux.) Bazel does not support this version of bash.exe.

    • PATH: Add the Python directory.

    • JAVA_HOME: Set to the JDK directory.

    For example:

    export BAZEL_VS="C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2017/BuildTools"
export BAZEL_SH="C:/msys64/usr/bin/bash.exe"
export PATH="/c/python27:$PATH"
export JAVA_HOME="C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.8.0_112"

    or

    export BAZEL_VC="C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2017/BuildTools/VC"
export BAZEL_SH="c:/msys64/usr/bin/bash.exe"
export PATH="/c/python27:$PATH"
export JAVA_HOME="C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.8.0_112"

  3. Change into the directory where you unpacked the distribution archive.

  4. Run the compilation script: ./compile.sh

The compiled output is placed into output/bazel.exe. This is a self-contained Bazel binary, without an embedded JDK. You can copy it to a directory within the %PATH% variable or use it in-place.

You don't need to run Bazel from the MSYS2 shell. You can run Bazel from the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) or PowerShell.