Bazel BUILD Encyclopedia of Functions

Concepts and terminology

• Common definitions
  • Bourne shell tokenization
  • Label expansion
  • Common attributes
  • Common attributes for tests
  • Common attributes for binaries
  • Configurable attributes
  • Implicit output targets
• "Make" variables
  • "Make" variable substitution

Functions

• package
• package_group
• licenses
• exports_files
• glob
• select
• workspace

Rules

Native rules ship with the Bazel binary and do not require a load statement. Native rules are available globally in BUILD files. In .bzl files, you can find them in the native module.

Language-specific native rules

Language	Binary rules	Library rules	Test rules	Other rules
Android	android_binary	aar_import android_library	android_instrumentation_test android_local_test	android_device android_ndk_repository android_sdk_repository
C / C++	cc_binary	cc_import cc_library cc_proto_library fdo_prefetch_hints fdo_profile	cc_test	cc_toolchain cc_toolchain_suite
Java	java_binary	java_import java_library java_lite_proto_library java_proto_library	java_test	java_package_configuration java_plugin	java_runtime java_toolchain
Objective-C	apple_binary apple_static_library	j2objc_library objc_import objc_library objc_proto_library
Protocol Buffer		proto_lang_toolchain proto_library
Python	py_binary	py_library	py_test	py_runtime
Shell	sh_binary	sh_library	sh_test

Native rules that do not apply to a specific programming language

Extra Actions	action_listener	extra_action
General	filegroup	genquery	test_suite	alias config_setting genrule
Platform				constraint_setting constraint_value	platform toolchain
Workspace				bind local_repository maven_jar	maven_server new_local_repository xcode_config xcode_version

Embedded non-native rules

Bazel also embeds additional rules written in Starlark. Those can be loaded from the @bazel_tools built-in external repository.

• repository rules
• package rules

Additional rules

Non-native rules extend Bazel's capabilities. Rules for many popular languages have been created and are being maintained outside of Bazel. Contact the respective rule set's maintainers regarding issues and feature requests.

To find more Bazel rules, use a search engine or look on GitHub.

Here is a selection of popular rules:

• Android
• Apple platforms
• Boost
• C#
• Closure
• Docker
• Go
• Haskell
• Jsonnet
• Kotlin
• Kubernetes
• NodeJS
• Protobuf
• Python
• Rust
• Scala
• Swift
• Typescript
• Webtesting (Webdriver)

The repository Skylib contains additional functions that can be useful when writing new rules and new macros.