bazelbuild / bazelbuild/stardoc

Extract --flag_alias from bazelrc and use docstrings of target to provide better bazel --help

Open
#115 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
P3 type: feature request
Dominant language
Java
Stars
118
Forks
51
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Currently, Bazel flags show up in `bazel --help`, but user defined flags do not.
As more code moves from native Bazel to Starlark, important flags for are likely to acquire `--flag_alias`es in `bazelrc` to make them easier to use. This is especially true for flags to core language rules like `--copt` Having the documentation for those as part of `--help` would prevent loss of documentation as they migrate.

This would build on the basic ability to document targets from #108

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reading the existing target documentation work from #108 and the behavior of `bazel --help`. Trace how `--flag_alias` entries in `bazelrc` and target docstrings could contribute to help output; done means user-defined aliased flags are documented there without losing the existing native flag help.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
java
Domain
build-system, documentation
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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