bazelbuild / bazelbuild/bazel-skylib

Support `stamp` in `run_binary`

Open
#541 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
Starlark
Stars
444
Forks
202
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

It's common to use `genrule` with `stamp = -1` to integrate the workspace status (git hash or timestamp) into binaries. (This is not well documented, but see https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/4942.) However, `genrule` is not cross-platform; folks should really be using `run_binary` instead of `genrule` wherever they can. Unfortunately, `run_binary` doesn't have the `stamp` attribute!

The FR is to add that support.

BTW, the `bazel-lib` fork of `run_binary` does support `stamp = -1` https://github.com/bazel-contrib/bazel-lib/issues/185. I'm not sure if the fork is close enough for the support to be easy to upstream.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the run_binary rule and compare its stamp behavior with genrule and the bazel-lib fork referenced in the issue. Confirm how stamp = -1 integrates workspace status, then add support and verify that run_binary can use it for cross-platform binary generation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
build-system
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.