bazelbuild / bazelbuild/bazel

Ensure only a minimal set of external dependencies vendored for building a hello-world binary

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#22,684 27 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
P2 team-ExternalDeps team-Rules-CPP team-Rules-Java type: bug
Dominant language
Java
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Description

### Description of the bug:

#### C++ hello-world

Using C++ binary as an example.

To build a C++ hello-world binary offline
```
cc_binary(
name = "bin",
srcs = ["main.cc"],
)
```
we'll have to vendor the following repositories with Bazel built at 96b90baf08172bb55844c2366111a0c39b6f9e14 or later.

- bazel_features
- bazel_skylib
- platforms
- rules_cc
- rules_java
- rules_python

While, the first four as acceptable, rules_java and rules_python should not be required by default for building a simple C++ hello world program.

The same can be apply to building hello-world program of other languages.

#### Java hello-world

- bazel_features~
- bazel_skylib~
- platforms
- rules_cc~
- rules_java~
- rules_java~~toolchains~remote_java_tools
- rules_java~~toolchains~remote_java_tools_darwin_arm64
- rules_java~~toolchains~remotejdk11_macos_aarch64
- rules_java~~toolchains~remotejdk21_macos_aarch64
- rules_proto~
- rules_python~

### Suggested solution

- Add test to prevent additional dependencies are added
- Cut off unwanted dependencies.

### Which category does this issue belong to?

_No response_

### What's the simplest, easiest way to reproduce this bug? Please provide a minimal example if possible.

https://github.com/meteorcloudy/minimal_vendor_test/tree/main

### Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

macOS, Linux, Windows

### What is the output of `bazel info release`?

96b90baf08172bb55844c2366111a0c39b6f9e14 or later

### If `bazel info release` returns `development version` or `(@non-git)`, tell us how you built Bazel.

_No response_

### What's the output of `git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse HEAD` ?

_No response_

### If this is a regression, please try to identify the Bazel commit where the bug was introduced with bazelisk --bisect.

_No response_

### Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

_No response_

### Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the linked minimal_vendor_test reproduction and compare the external repositories pulled in for the C++ and Java hello-world builds. Trace Bazel's default dependency declarations and add a regression test that detects newly required repositories. Done means offline builds vendor only the minimal dependencies needed for each language.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, java
Domain
build-system
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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