A CLion plugin for Bazel projects

As of July 1, 2025, the Bazel for IntelliJ and Bazel for CLion plugins are maintained by JetBrains. These plugins are not offered by nor affiliated with Google. The Bazel trademark and logo are the property of Google LLC.

This project uses binary bundles licensed under JetBrains User Agreement.

The Bazel for CLion plugin is uploaded to the JetBrains Marketplace regularly from the state of this repository. See the releases tab for more information.

Community

The Bazel project is hosting a Special Interest Group (SIG) for Bazel IntelliJ IDE plug-in. Details about the SIG and how to join the discussion can be found in the SIG charter.

Support

See the documentation entry on the plugin support across JetBrains products, languages, and operating systems.

Source Code Locations

The Bazel for CLion plugin is built and released from the master branch of this repository.

The Bazel for IntelliJ plugin is built and released from the ijwb branch of this repository. However, maintenance for the IntelliJ plugin is limited to ensuring compatibility with new versions of JetBrains IDEs. No new features or bug fixes will be provided.

The Bazel for Android Studio plugin is built and released from AOSP. The google branch is now deprecated. The last snapshot of the Android Studio plugin that was hosted in this repository can be found on the aswb branch.

Although the code in this repository and in AOSP share the same structure and core components, they have diverged from each other.

• Changes for the CLion plugin are only merged into the master branch of this repository. Users can request that certain fixes which are also needed for the Android Studio plugin get merged into the AOSP project. This will require the internal teams’ approval.
• Changes made by the internal Google teams are automatically exported to AOSP. These commits were regularly cherry-picked to the master branch. See the next paragraph for details.
• The Android Studio plugin was removed from the master branch and is now only available in the AOSP.

Cherry-picks from AOSP to this project

After the migration of the Android Studio plugin to AOSP, this process was interrupted for approximately five months.

In November 2024, many changes from AOSP were cherry-picked in 6965. Starting from that point, we have been making our best effort to apply AOSP changes to the master branch.

For this purpose, we use the Python tool LeFrosch/intellij-aosp-merge, which is capable of adjusting paths from AOSP to this project's layout and allows us to compare revisions in AOSP and here.

Status of picked and skipped commits could be found in the following googledoc.

Due to multiple regressions caused by picks from the AOSP, cherry-picks have been halted for the time being.

Installation

You can find our plugin in the JetBrains Marketplace or directly from the IDE by going to Settings -> Plugins -> Marketplace, and searching for Bazel.

Usage

We recommend watching this video to familiarize yourself with the plugin's features.

To import an existing Bazel project, choose Import Bazel Project, and follow the instructions in the project import wizard.

Detailed docs are available here.

Known issues

Python debugging

Please read this comment #4745 (comment)

Remote Development

To properly set up Remote Development (https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/), follow these steps:

1. Create an empty project on the remote machine (this can be just an empty directory).
2. Import the project using Remote Development.
3. Install the Bazel Plugin on the host machine.
4. Close the project.
5. Open the initially intended project.

Building the plugin

Install Bazel, then build the target //clwb:clwb_bazel_zip:

bazel build //clwb:clwb_bazel_zip --define=ij_product=clion-oss-latest-stable

from the project root. This will create a plugin zip file at bazel-bin/clwb/clwb_bazel.zip, which can be installed directly from the IDE.

If the IDE refuses to load the plugin because of version issues, specify the correct ij_product. These are in the form clion-oss-<VERSION> with <VERSION> being one of

• oldest-stable
• latest-stable
• under-dev.

Alternatively, for you can set ij_product to direct CLion versions, for example clion-2025.2.

<IDE>-oss-oldest-stable and <IDE>-oss-latest-stable are aliases for the two IDE versions that the plugin is officially compatible with at a given time. <IDE>-oss-latest-stable usually maps to the last released IDE version while <IDE>-oss-oldest-stable maps to the one right before that, e.g. <IDE>-oss-oldest-stable=2022.1 and <IDE>-oss-latest-stable=2022.2. Additionally, <IDE>-oss-under-dev represents the upcoming version of the IDE that we are working towards supporting. A complete mapping of all currently defined versions can be found in intellij_platform_sdk/build_defs.bzl.

You can import the project into IntelliJ (with the Bazel plugin) via importing the ijwb/ijwb.bazelproject file.

Compatibility with IDE Versions

You can build the plugin for different IDE versions by adjusting the ij_product option either from command line or by updating the .bazelproject file to specify the desired value for ij_product under build_flags.

We have three aliases for product versions;

• oldest-stable is the oldest IDE version supported by the Bazel plugin released to the JetBrains stable channel.
• latest-stable is the latest IDE version supported by the Bazel plugin released to the JetBrains stable channel.
• under-dev is the IDE version we are currently working towards supporting.

The current corresponding IDE versions of these aliases can be found here.

Contributions

We welcome contributions to support new IDE versions. However, to make the review process faster and easier, we recommend the following:

• We can only accept small pull requests. Smaller pull requests tend to have fewer review comments and hence can get submitted much faster. They also tend to conflict less with our internal code base, simplifying the integration for us. For example, you should have separate pull requests each focusing on a certain incompatible change rather than having a large pull request fixing multiple ones.

• Since we continue to support a number of IDE versions while working on a new one, you need to make sure that your proposed changes do not break older versions. Our presubmit pipeline will take care of testing your changes against all the supported versions and lets you know whether it broke anything.

• To facilitate merging your changes into upstream, we recommend following our procedure for supporting SDK backward-compatibility.

  • First consider adjusting the plugin code so that it directly works with different IDE versions. Example strategies for this would be:

    • Switching to a (possibly newer) IntelliJ platform API which is available in all relevant IDE versions. Example: pr/2623
    • Switching to a raw class by removing a generic type parameter which differs across versions. Example: pr/2631

  • For non-trivial incompatible changes, the code for maintaining SDK compatibility lives in sdkcompat and testing/testcompat directories, where testing/testcompat holds test-only SDK compatibility changes. Each of the two directories contains a sub-folder per supported IDE version with version-specific implementations. The outside API of all classes must be the same across versions, just the implementation may differ. When introducing a new file in this directory, make sure to duplicate it appropriately across all versions.
    We follow these three techniques for non-trivial incompatible changes.

    • Compat
      Preferred to Adapter and Wrapper when applicable. We add a util-class with only static methods and a private constructor and wrap the changed method by one of the static methods. If the change is small enough, you do not need to create a new util-class and should add the change to BaseSdkCompat class instead. Example: pr/2345

    • Adapter
      Used when we extend a super class and its constructor is updated. We create a new class extending the changed super class then extend this new class from the plugin code. Example: pr/2352

    • Wrapper
      Created when a new interface is used in a super class constructor. We create a wrapper class that wraps and supplies the old or the new interface based on the SDK version and use this wrapper class in the plugin code. Example: pr/2166

• All compat changes must be commented with #api{API_VERSION}, e.g. #api203. This represents the last API version that requires the code, i.e. the one before the version you aim to support. This is needed to make it easier to find and clean up this functionality when paving old versions.

• Compat classes must never import plugin code and we try to keep the logic and code in them as minimal as possible.

We may also be able to accept contributions to fix general issues or adding new features with some caveats:

• Before opening a pull request, first file an issue and discuss potential changes with the devs. This will often save you time you would otherwise have invested in a patch which can't be applied.
• Improvements for old not supported IDE versions will not be accepted. Your changes should target the currently supported IDE versions. You can find a list of these versions here.
• We can't accept stylistic, refactoring, or "cleanup" changes.
• We have very limited bandwidth, and applying patches upstream is a time-consuming process. Large patches generally can't be accepted unless there's clear value for all our users.