bazelbuild / bazelbuild/bazel

Provide convenience symlinks information in `bazel info`

Open
#23,035 4 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
awaiting-user-response team-Core type: feature request
Dominant language
Java
Stars
25.8k
Forks
4.6k
Avg merge
2d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
72

Description

### Description of the feature request:

`bazel info` already provides a way to obtain output_base directory and some significant subdirectories.

Would it be also possible to provide similar information about the convenience symlinks? They can be manipulated with the `--symlink_prefix` flag, so we can't assume their names.

This would be useful for tools like IntelliJ to mark these folders as excluded (from indexing) as early as possible.

### Which category does this issue belong to?

CLI

### What underlying problem are you trying to solve with this feature?

Mark the convenience symlinks as ignored as soon as possible during the IntelliJ sync process

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

_No response_

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

_No response_

### 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_

### 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 by tracing how `bazel info` reports output directories and how `--symlink_prefix` determines convenience symlink names. Define the information needed by IntelliJ to identify those symlinks reliably, then verify that the resulting `bazel info` output reflects custom prefixes and supports early exclusion during sync.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
java
Domain
build-system, cli, developer-experience
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.