Functions

package

package(default_deprecation, default_testonly, default_visibility, features)

This function declares metadata that applies to every subsequent rule in the package. It is used at most once within a package (BUILD file).

The package() function should be called right after all the load() statements at the top of the file, before any rule.

Arguments

Attribute	Description
default_visibility	List of labels; optional The default visibility of the rules in this package. Every rule in this package has the visibility specified in this attribute, unless otherwise specified in the visibility attribute of the rule. For detailed information about the syntax of this attribute, see the documentation of the visibility attribute. The package default visibility does not apply to exports_files, which is public by default.
default_deprecation	String; optional Sets the default deprecation message for all rules in this package.
default_testonly	Boolean; optional; default is 0 except as noted Sets the default testonly property for all rules in this package. In packages under javatests the default value is 1.
features	List strings; optional Sets various flags that affect the semantics of this BUILD file. This feature is mainly used by the people working on the build system to tag packages that need some kind of special handling. Do not use this unless explicitly requested by someone working on the build system.

Examples

The declaration below declares that the rules in this package are visible only to members of package group //foo:target. Individual visibility declarations on a rule, if present, override this specification.

package(default_visibility = ["//foo:target"])

package_group

package_group(name, packages, includes)

This function defines a set of packages and assigns a label to the group. The label can be referenced in visibility attributes.

Package groups are used for visibility control. You can grant access to a rule to one or more package groups, every rule in the entire source tree, or only to rules declared in the same package. For more detailed description of the visibility system, see the visibility attribute.

Arguments

Attribute	Description
name	Name; required A unique name for this target.
packages	List of Package; optional A complete enumeration of packages in this group. Packages should be referred to using their full names, starting with a double slash. For example, //foo/bar/main is a valid element of this list. You can also specify wildcards: the specification //foo/... specifies every package under //foo, including //foo itself. Package specifications can be prefixed with - to indicate negation: the specification -//foo/bar/... excludes all packages under //foo/bar that would otherwise have been matched by the package patterns in the current package_group. When used together with includes, the set of packages for each package group is computed and then the results are unioned: negative patterns in one package group do not affect the result of included package groups. If this attribute is missing, the package group itself will contain no packages (but it can still include other package groups).
includes	List of labels; optional Other package groups that are included in this one. The labels in this attribute must refer to other package groups. Packages in referenced package groups are taken to be part of this package group. This is transitive, that is, if package group a contains package group b, and b contains package group c, every package in c will also be a member of a.

Examples

The following package_group declaration specifies a package group called "tropical" that contains tropical fruits.

package_group(
    name = "tropical",
    packages = [
        "//fruits/mango",
        "//fruits/orange",
        "//fruits/papaya/...",
    ],
)

The following declarations specify the package groups of a fictional application:

package_group(
    name = "fooapp",
    includes = [
        ":controller",
        ":model",
        ":view",
    ],
)

package_group(
    name = "model",
    packages = ["//fooapp/database"],
)

package_group(
    name = "view",
    packages = [
        "//fooapp/swingui",
        "//fooapp/webui",
    ],
)

package_group(
    name = "controller",
    packages = ["//fooapp/algorithm"],
)

exports_files

exports_files([label, ...], visibility, licenses)

exports_files() specifies a list of files belonging to this package that are exported to other packages.

The BUILD file for a package may only refer directly to source files belonging to another package if they are explicitly exported with an

exports_files()

statement. As a legacy behaviour, also files mentioned as input to a rule are exported with the default visibility until the flag --incompatible_no_implicit_file_export is flipped. However, this behavior should not be relied upon and actively migrated away from.

Arguments

The argument is a list of names of files within the current package. A visibility declaration can also be specified; in this case, the files will be visible to the targets specified. If no visibility is specified, the files will be visible to every package, even if a package default visibility was specified in the package function. The licenses can also be specified.

Example

The following example exports golden.txt, a text file from the test_data package, so that other packages may use it, for example, in the data attribute of tests.

# from //test_data/BUILD

exports_files(["golden.txt"])

glob

glob(include, exclude=[], exclude_directories=1, allow_empty=True)

Glob is a helper function that finds all files that match certain path patterns, and returns a list of their paths. Glob only searches files in its own package, and looks only for source files (not generated files nor other targets).

A source file's Label is included in the result if the file's package-relative path matches any of the include patterns and none of the exclude patterns.

The include and exclude lists contain path patterns that are relative to the current package. Every pattern may consist of one or more path segments. As usual with Unix paths, these segments are separated by /. Segments may contain the * wildcard: this matches any substring in the path segment (even the empty substring), excluding the directory separator /. This wildcard can be used multiple times within one path segment. Additionally, the ** wildcard can match zero or more complete path segments, but it must be declared as a standalone path segment.

Examples:

• foo/bar.txt matches exactly the foo/bar.txt file in this package
• foo/*.txt matches every file in the foo/ directory if the file ends with .txt (unless foo/ is a subpackage)
• foo/a*.htm* matches every file in the foo/ directory that starts with a, then has an arbitrary string (could be empty), then has .htm, and ends with another arbitrary string; such as foo/axx.htm and foo/a.html or foo/axxx.html
• **/a.txt matches every a.txt file in every subdirectory of this package
• **/bar/**/*.txt matches every .txt file in every subdirectory of this package, if at least one directory on the resulting path is called bar, such as xxx/bar/yyy/zzz/a.txt or bar/a.txt (remember that ** also matches zero segments) or bar/zzz/a.txt
• ** matches every file in every subdirectory of this package
• foo**/a.txt is an invalid pattern, because ** must stand on its own as a segment

If the exclude_directories argument is enabled (set to 1), files of type directory will be omitted from the results (default 1).

If the allow_empty argument is set to False, the glob function will error-out if the result would otherwise be the empty list.

There are several important limitations and caveats:

1. Since glob() runs during BUILD file evaluation, glob() matches files only in your source tree, never generated files. If you are building a target that requires both source and generated files, you must append an explicit list of generated files to the glob. See the example below with :mylib and :gen_java_srcs.

2. If a rule has the same name as a matched source file, the rule will "shadow" the file.

   To understand this, remember that glob() returns a list of paths, so using glob() in other rules' attribute (e.g. srcs = glob(["*.cc"])) has the same effect as listing the matched paths explicitly. If for example glob() yields ["Foo.java", "bar/Baz.java"] but there's also a rule in the package called "Foo.java" (which is allowed, though Bazel warns about it), then the consumer of the glob() will use the "Foo.java" rule (its outputs) instead of the "Foo.java" file. See GitHub issue #10395 for more details.

3. Globs may match files in subdirectories. And subdirectory names may be wildcarded. However...

4. Labels are not allowed to cross the package boundary and glob does not match files in subpackages.

   For example, the glob expression **/*.cc in package x does not include x/y/z.cc if x/y exists as a package (either as x/y/BUILD, or somewhere else on the package-path). This means that the result of the glob expression actually depends on the existence of BUILD files — that is, the same glob expression would include x/y/z.cc if there was no package called x/y or it was marked as deleted using the --deleted_packages flag.

5. The restriction above applies to all glob expressions, no matter which wildcards they use.
6. A hidden file with filename starting with . is completely matched by both the ** and the * wildcards. If you want to match a hidden file with a compound pattern, your pattern needs to begin with a .. For example, * and .*.txt will match .foo.txt, but *.txt will not.
7. The "**" wildcard has one corner case: the pattern "**" doesn't match the package's directory path. That is to say, glob(["**"], exclude_directories = 0) matches all files and directories transitively strictly under the current package's directory (but of course not going into directories of subpackages - see the previous note about that).

In general, you should try to provide an appropriate extension (e.g. *.html) instead of using a bare '*' for a glob pattern. The more explicit name is both self documenting and ensures that you don't accidentally match backup files, or emacs/vi/... auto-save files.

When writing build rules you can enumerate the elements of the glob. This enables generating individual rules for every input, for example. See the expanded glob example section below.

Glob Examples

Create a Java library built from all java files in this directory, and all files generated by the :gen_java_srcs rule.

java_library(
    name = "mylib",
    srcs = glob(["*.java"]) + [":gen_java_srcs"],
    deps = "...",
)

genrule(
    name = "gen_java_srcs",
    outs = [
        "Foo.java",
        "Bar.java",
    ],
    ...
)

Include all txt files in directory testdata except experimental.txt. Note that files in subdirectories of testdata will not be included. If you want those files to be included, use a recursive glob (**).

sh_test(
    name = "mytest",
    srcs = ["mytest.sh"],
    data = glob(
        ["testdata/*.txt"],
        exclude = ["testdata/experimental.txt"],
    ),
)

Recursive Glob Examples

Make the test depend on all txt files in the testdata directory and any of its subdirectories (and their subdirectories, and so on). Subdirectories containing a BUILD file are ignored. (See limitations and caveats above.)

sh_test(
    name = "mytest",
    srcs = ["mytest.sh"],
    data = glob(["testdata/**/*.txt"]),
)

Create a library built from all java files in this directory and all subdirectories except those whose path includes a directory named testing. This pattern should be avoided if possible, as it can reduce build incrementality and therefore increase build times.

java_library(
    name = "mylib",
    srcs = glob(
        ["**/*.java"],
        exclude = ["**/testing/**"],
    ),
)

Expanded Glob Examples

Create an individual genrule for *_test.cc in the current directory that counts the number of lines in the file.

# Conveniently, the build language supports list comprehensions.
[genrule(
    name = "count_lines_" + f[:-3],  # strip ".cc"
    srcs = [f],
    outs = ["%s-linecount.txt" % f[:-3]],
    cmd = "wc -l $< >$@",
 ) for f in glob(["*_test.cc"])]

If the BUILD file above is in package //foo and the package contains three matching files, a_test.cc, b_test.cc and c_test.cc then running bazel query '//foo:all' will list all rules that were generated:

$ bazel query '//foo:all' | sort
//foo:count_lines_a_test
//foo:count_lines_b_test
//foo:count_lines_c_test

select

select(
    {conditionA: valuesA, conditionB: valuesB, ...},
    no_match_error = "custom message"
)

select() is the helper function that makes a rule attribute configurable. It can replace the right-hand side of almost any attribute assignment so its value depends on command-line Bazel flags. This can be used, for example, to define platform-specific dependencies or to embed different resources depending on whether a rule is built in "developer" vs. "release" mode.

Basic usage is as follows:

sh_binary(
    name = "myrule",
    srcs = select({
        ":conditionA": ["myrule_a.sh"],
        ":conditionB": ["myrule_b.sh"],
        "//conditions:default": ["myrule_default.sh"]
    })
)

This makes the srcs attribute of a sh_binary configurable by replacing its normal label list assignment with a select call that maps configuration conditions to matching values. Each condition is a label reference to a config_setting instance, which "matches" if the rule's configuration matches an expected set of values. The value of myrule#srcs then becomes whichever label list matches the current invocation.

Further notes:

• Exactly one condition is selected on any invocation.
• If multiple conditions match and one is a specialization of the others, the specialization takes precedence. Condition B is considered a specialization of condition A if B has all the same flags as A plus some additional flags. However, the number of constraint values that A and B have are not considered in this comparison -- one condition cannot match a platform more than another condition does.
• If multiple conditions match and one is not a specialization of all the others, Bazel fails with an error.
• The special pseudo-label //conditions:default is considered to match if no other condition matches. If this condition is left out, some other rule must match to avoid an error.
• select can be embedded inside a larger attribute assignment. So srcs = ["common.sh"] + select({ ":conditionA": ["myrule_a.sh"], ...}) and srcs = select({ ":conditionA": ["a.sh"]}) + select({ ":conditionB": ["b.sh"]}) are valid expressions.
• select works with most, but not all, attributes. Incompatible attributes are marked nonconfigurable in their documentation.

By default, Bazel produces the following error when no conditions match:

Configurable attribute "foo" doesn't match this configuration (would a default
condition help?).
Conditions checked:
 //pkg:conditionA.
 //pkg:conditionB.

no_match_error can be used to signal more precise errors.

Examples

config_setting(
    name = "windows",
    values = {
        "crosstool_top": "//crosstools/windows",
    },
)

cc_binary(
    name = "multiplatform_app",
    ...
    linkopts = select({
        ":windows": [
            "-Wl,windows_support1.lib",
            "-Wl,windows_support2.lib",
        ],
        "//conditions:default": [],
    ...
)

In the above example, multiplatform_app links with additional options when invoked with bazel build //pkg:multiplatform_app --crosstool_top=//crosstools/windows .