bazelbuild / bazelbuild/bazel

Bazel x86 Compilation Bug on Windows with MSVC

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#25,447 7 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
P3 team-Rules-CPP type: bug
Dominant language
Java
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Description

### Description of the bug:

The bug occurs when using Bazel on Windows with MSVC and the C++ toolchain to target a 32-bit (x86) build. Despite specifying x86 as the target, setting --cpu=x86_windows and --host_cpu=x86_windows in .bazelrc, and ensuring all necessary Windows-specific configurations are present, the produced binary is actually built as a 64-bit (x64) executable. This can be verified by running the Dumpbin /headers command on the binary, which reveals that the header information still indicates an x64 architecture.

### Which category does this issue belong to?

C++ Rules

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

The link to the example which is a Simple Calculator DLL library that supports both Bazel and CMake build systems
https://github.com/farnoodfma/Simple-Calculator-Library/tree/main

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

Windows

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

release 8.0.0

### 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` ?

```text

```

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

I do not know.

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

This issue may be related: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/22164

### 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 Simple-Calculator-Library example and reproduce the Bazel 8.0.0 build on Windows with MSVC, using the reported .bazelrc settings. Inspect the output with Dumpbin /headers and compare the behavior with issue #22164; done means the x86 target produces a binary whose headers identify it as x86 rather than x64.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
build-system, compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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