| |
| What is Bazel? |
| ------------- |
| |
| Bazel is a build system, i.e. a system that will run compilers and |
| tests to assemble your software, similar to Make, Ant, Gradle, Buck, Pants, |
| and Maven. |
| |
| |
| What is special about Bazel? |
| ----------------------- |
| |
| Bazel was designed to fit the way software is developed at Google. It |
| has the following features: |
| |
| * Multi-language support: Bazel supports Java and C++ out of the box, |
| and can be extended to support arbitrary programming languages. |
| |
| * High-level build language: Projects are described in the BUILD |
| language, a concise text format that describes a project as sets of |
| small interconnected libraries. By contrast, in systems like Make |
| you have to describe individual files and compiler invocations. |
| |
| * Multi-platform support: The same tool and the same BUILD files can |
| be used to build software for different architectures, and even |
| different platforms. At Google, we use Bazel to build both server |
| applications (C++, Java, and Go binaries running on systems in our |
| data centers) and client apps (Android and iOS apps running on ARM |
| chips). |
| |
| * Reproducibility: In BUILD files, each library, test, and binary must |
| specify its dependencies completely. Bazel uses this dependency |
| information to know what must be rebuilt when you make changes to a |
| source file, and which tasks can run in parallel. This means that |
| all builds are incremental and will always produce the same result. |
| |
| * Scalable: Bazel can handle large builds; at Google, it is common for |
| a server binary to have 100k source files, and builds where no files |
| were changed take about ~200ms. |
| |
| |
| Why didn't you use ...? |
| ----------------------- |
| |
| * Make, Ninja: These systems give very exact control over what commands |
| get invoked to build files, but it's up to the user to write rules |
| that are correct. |
| |
| Users interact with Bazel on a higher level. For example, it has |
| built-in rules for "Java test", "C++ binary", and notions such as |
| "target platform" and "host platform". The rules have been battle |
| tested to be foolproof. |
| |
| * Ant and Maven: Ant and Maven are primarily geared toward Java, while |
| Bazel handles multiple languages. Bazel encourages subdividing |
| codebases in smaller reusable units, and can rebuild only ones that |
| need rebuilding. This speeds up development when working with larger |
| codebases. |
| |
| * Gradle: Bazel configuration files are much more structured than |
| Gradle's, letting Bazel understand exactly what each action does. |
| This allows for more parallelism and better reproducibility. |
| |
| * Buck, Pants: Both systems were created ex-Googlers at Twitter and |
| Facebook. They have been modeled on Bazel, but their feature set |
| has not caught up to Bazel, so it's not an alternative for us. |
| |
| |
| What is Bazel's origin? |
| ----------------------- |
| |
| Bazel is a flavor of the tool that Google uses to build its server |
| software internally. It has expanded to also build the client apps |
| (iOS, Android) that connect to our servers. |
| |
| |
| Did you rewrite your internal tool as open-source? Is it a fork? |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| Bazel shares most of its code with the internal tool and its rules are |
| used for zillions of builds every day. |
| |
| |
| Why did Google build Bazel? |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| A long time ago, Google built its software using large, generated |
| Makefiles. These led to slow and unreliable builds, which began to |
| interfere with our developers' productivity and the company's |
| agility. Hence, we built Bazel. |
| |
| |
| Does Bazel require a build cluster? |
| ----------------------------------- |
| |
| Google's in-house flavor of Bazel does use [build |
| clusters](http://google-engtools.blogspot.com/2011/09/build-in-cloud-distributing-build-steps.html), |
| so Bazel does have hooks in the code base to plug-in a remote build |
| cache or a remote execution system. |
| |
| The code base we are opening up runs tasks locally. We are confident |
| that this is fast enough for most of our users. |
| |
| |
| How does the Google development process work? |
| ---------------------------------------------- |
| |
| For our server code, we use the following development workflow: |
| |
| * All of our server code base is in a single, gigantic version control |
| system. |
| |
| * Everybody builds their software with Bazel. |
| |
| * Different teams own different parts of the source tree, and make |
| their components available as BUILD targets. |
| |
| * Branching is primarily used for managing releases, so everybody |
| develops their software at head. |
| |
| Bazel is a cornerstones of this philosophy: since Bazel requires all |
| dependencies to be fully specified, we can predict which programs and |
| tests are affected by a change, and vet them before submission. |
| |
| More background on the development process at Google can be found on |
| the [eng tools blog](http://google-engtools.blogspot.com/). |
| |
| |
| Why are you opening up Bazel? |
| ----------------------------- |
| |
| Building software should be fun and easy, and slow and unpredictable |
| builds take the fun out of programming. |
| |
| |
| Why would I want to use Bazel? |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| * Bazel may give you faster build times because it can recompile only |
| the files that need to be recompiled. Similarly, it can skip |
| re-running tests it knows haven't changed. |
| |
| * Bazel produces deterministic results. This eliminates skews |
| between incremental vs clean builds, laptop vs CI system, etc. |
| |
| * Bazel can share code between different client and server apps. For |
| example, you can change a client/server protocol in a single commit, |
| and test that the updated mobile app works with the updated server, |
| building both with the same tool, reaping all the aforementioned |
| benefits of Bazel. |
| |
| |
| What is Bazel best at? |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| Bazel shines at building and testing projects with the following properties: |
| |
| * Projects with a large codebase |
| * Projects written in (multiple) compiled languages |
| * Projects that deploy on multiple platforms |
| * Projects that have extensive tests |
| |
| |
| On what platforms does Bazel run? |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| Currently, Linux and MacOS. Porting to other Unix platforms should be |
| straightforward, provided a JDK is available for the platform. |
| |
| |
| What about Windows? |
| ------------------- |
| |
| We have experimented with a Windows port using MinGW/MSYS (see |
| README.windows), but have no plans to invest in this port right |
| now. Due to its Unix heritage, porting Bazel is significant work. For |
| example, Bazel uses symlinks extensively, which has varying levels of |
| support across Windows versions. |
| |
| |
| What should I not use Bazel for? |
| -------------------------------- |
| |
| * Bazel tries to be smart about caching. This means it is a bad match |
| for build steps that may not be cached. For example, the following |
| steps should not be controlled from Bazel: |
| |
| * A compilation step that fetches data from the internet. |
| * A test step that connects to the QA instance of your site. |
| * A deployment step that changes your site's cloud configuration. |
| |
| * Bazel tries to minimize expensive compilation steps. If you are only |
| using interpreted languages, such as JavaScript or Python, Bazel |
| will likely not interest you. |
| |
| |
| |
| How stable is Bazel's feature set? |
| -------------------- |
| |
| The core features (C++, Java, and shell rules) have extensive use |
| inside Google, so they are thoroughly tested and have very little |
| churn. Similarly, we test new versions of Bazel across our millions |
| of targets every day to find regressions, and we release new versions |
| multiple times every month. |
| |
| In short, except for features marked as experimental, at any point in |
| time, Bazel should Just Work. |
| |
| You can recognize the different experimental features as follows: |
| |
| * Options: Experimental features start with --experimental_. |
| |
| * Rules: Experimental rules are undocumented in the |
| build encyclopedia. TODO(bazel-team): add link. |
| |
| * Attributes: Experimental rule attributes are undocumented in the |
| build encyclopedia. TODO(bazel-team): add link. |
| |
| * TODO(bazel-team): document skylark status more precisely. |
| |
| |
| How stable is Bazel as a binary? |
| -------------------- |
| |
| Inside Google, we make sure that Bazel crashes are very rare. This |
| should also hold for our open-source codebase. |
| |
| |
| How can I start using Bazel? |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| See our [getting started |
| doc](https://github.com/google/bazel/blob/master/docs/getting-started.md) |
| |
| TODO(bazel-team): more doc links |
| |
| |
| Why do I need to have a tools/ directory in my tree? |
| ---------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| Your project never works in isolation. Typically, it builds with a |
| certain version of the JDK/C++ compiler, with a certain test driver |
| framework, on a certain version of your operating system. |
| |
| These aspects make builds less reproducible, and to counter this, we |
| at Google check most of these tools into version control, including |
| the toolchains and Bazel itself. By convention, we do this in a |
| directory called "tools". |
| |
| Bazel allows tools such as the JDK to live outside your workspace, but |
| the configuration data for this (where is the JDK, where is the C++ |
| compiler?) still needs to be somewhere, and that place is tools/. |
| |
| Bazel comes with a base_workspace/ directory, containing a minimal set |
| of configuration files, suitable for running toolchains from |
| /usr/bin/. |
| |
| |
| Doesn't Docker solve the reproducibility problems? |
| -------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| With Docker you can easily create sandboxes with fixed OS releases, |
| eg. Ubuntu 12.04, Fedora 21. This solves the problem of |
| reproducibility for the system environment (i.e. "which version of |
| /usr/bin/c++ do I need?"). |
| |
| It does not address reproducibility with regard to changes in the |
| source code. Running Make with an imperfectly written Makefile inside a |
| Docker container can still yield unpredictable results. |
| |
| Inside Google, we check in tools for reproducibility. In this way, we |
| can vet changes to tools ("upgrade GCC to 4.6.1") with the same |
| mechanism as changes to base libraries ("fix bounds check in OpenSSL"). |
| |
| |
| Will Bazel make my builds reproducible automatically? |
| ----------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| For Java and C++ binaries, yes, assuming you do not change the |
| toolchain. If you have build steps that involve custom recipes |
| (eg. executing binaries through a shell rule), you will need to take |
| some extra care: |
| |
| * Do not use dependencies that were not declared. Sandboxed |
| execution (--spawn_strategy=sandboxed-linux, only on Linux) can |
| help find undeclared dependencies. |
| |
| * Avoid storing timestamps in generated files. ZIP files and other |
| archives are especially prone to this. |
| |
| * Avoid connecting to the network. Sandboxed execution can help here |
| too. |
| |
| * Avoid processes that use random numbers, in particular, dictionary |
| traversal is randomized in many programming languages. |
| |
| |
| Do you have binary releases? |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| No, but we should. Stay tuned. |
| |
| |
| I use Eclipse/IntelliJ. How does Bazel interoperate with IDEs? |
| -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| For integrating with external tools, including IDEs, we have the |
| following hooks: |
| |
| * "bazel query": lets you query the target dependency graph, see |
| TODO(bazel-team): link to doc. |
| |
| * Extra actions: Bazel can emit protobuf data detailing what |
| commands are to be invoked for building certain targets. |
| |
| Stay tuned for example IDE integration code. |
| |
| |
| I use Jenkins/CircleCI/TravisCI. How does Bazel interoperate with CI systems? |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| Bazel returns an invalid exit code if the build or test invocation |
| fails, and this should be enough for basic CI integration. Since |
| Bazel does not need clean builds for correctness, the CI system can |
| be configured to not clean before starting a build/test run. |
| |
| |
| What future features can we expect in Bazel? |
| -------------------------------------------- |
| |
| We work on supporting Google's internal use-cases. This includes |
| Google's principal languages (C++, Java, Go) and major platforms |
| (Linux, Android, iOS). For practical reasons, not all of these are currently |
| open-sourced. |
| |
| TODO(bazel-team): add link to public roadmap. |
| |
| |
| Where is the support for Go? Android? |
| ------------------------------------- |
| |
| We haven't made up our mind about these yet. |
| |
| |
| What about Python? |
| ------------------ |
| |
| Our internal usage of Python relies heavily on native extensions, and |
| its supporting infrastructure is specific to us, so we have no plans |
| to open-source it. |
| |
| It is possible to support other packaging mechanisms, though. See the |
| following files for an example of generating self-contained zip files |
| for python: |
| |
| https://github.com/google/bazel/blob/master/base_workspace/tools/build_rules/py_rules.bzl |
| https://github.com/google/bazel/tree/master/base_workspace/examples/py |
| |
| |
| Can I use Bazel for my LISP/Python/Haskell/Scala/Rust project? |
| ----------------------------------------------- |
| |
| We have an extension mechanism that allows you to add new rules |
| without recompiling Bazel. |
| |
| For documentation: see TODO(bazel-team). |
| |
| At present, the extension mechanism is experimental though. |
| |
| |
| I need more functionality; can I add rules that are compiled into Bazel? |
| --------------------------------------------- |
| |
| If our extension mechanism is insufficient for your use case, email |
| the mailing list for advice: bazel-discuss@googlegroups.com. |
| |
| |
| |
| Can I contribute to the Bazel code base? |
| ---------------------------------------- |
| |
| Not yet, but we are working on a process. |
| |
| Please consider the following: |
| |
| * Before starting to code, discuss your plan to make sure we agree on |
| it. We can be reached at bazel-discuss@googlegroups.com. |
| |
| * All contributors must sign a Contributor License Agreement at |
| |
| https://cla.developers.google.com/ |
| |
| * All contributions will have to go through pre-commit code review. |
| |
| * Contributions need a Google team member as sponsor. |
| |
| TODO(bazel-team): set up a process |
| |
| |
| Why isn't all development done in the open? |
| ------------------------------------------- |
| |
| We still have to refactor the interfaces between the public code in |
| Bazel and our internal extensions frequently. This makes it hard to do |
| much development in the open. |
| |
| TODO(bazel-team): link to roadmap. |
| |
| |
| How do I contact the team? |
| -------------------------- |
| |
| We are reachable at bazel-discuss@googlegroups.com. |
| |
| |
| Where do I report bugs? |
| ----------------------- |
| |
| Send us e-mail at bazel-discuss@googlegroups.com. |
| |
| |
| |
| What's up with the word "Blaze" in the codebase? |
| ------------------------------------------------ |
| |
| This is an internal name for the system. Please refer to Bazel as |
| Bazel. |
| |
| |
| Why do other Google projects (Android, Chrome) use other build tools? |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| Until now, Bazel was not available externally, so open source projects |
| such as Chromium, Android, etc. could not use it. In addition, lack of |
| Windows support is a problem for building Windows applications, such |
| as Chrome. |
| |
| |
| How do you pronounce "Bazel"? |
| ----------------------------- |
| |
| The same way as "basil" (the herb) in US English: "BAY-zel". It rhymes with |
| "hazel". IPA: /ˈbeɪzˌəl/ |
