Go rules for Bazel
Mailing list: bazel-go-discuss
- 2019-07-19
- Release 0.19.1 is now available with bug fixes for coverage, debugging, and race mode.
- 2019-07-16
- Gazelle release 0.18.1 is now available. It has better support for modules in go_repository and new features for managing repository rules declared in macros.
- 2019-07-13
- Release 0.19.0 is now available. It has better support for cross-compilation with newer versions of Bazel, improved rules for building packages, updated dependencies, and more.
- 2019-07-09
- Releases 0.18.7 and 0.17.8 are now available with support for Go 1.12.7 and 1.11.12. The 0.19.0 release branch will be cut soon with additional Bazel compatibility improvements for cross-compilation.
.
- Announcements
- Contents
- Overview
- Setup
- FAQ
- Can I still use the
go
tool? - Does this work with Go modules?
- What's up with the
go_default_library
name? - How do I access testdata?
- How do I cross-compile?
- How do I access
go_binary
executables fromgo_test
? - How do I run Bazel on Travis CI?
- How do I test a beta version of the Go SDK?
- How do I get information about the Go SDK used by rules_go?
- How do I avoid conflicts with protocol buffers?
- How do I build proto libraries and gRPC?
- Can I use a vendored gRPC with go_proto_library?
- Can I still use the
- Core API
- Workspace rules
- Protobuf rules
- Toolchains
- Extra rules
- nogo build-time code analysis
- Build modes
The rules are in the beta stage of development. They support:
- libraries
- binaries
- tests
- vendoring
- cgo
- cross compilation
- auto generating BUILD files via gazelle
- build-time code analysis via nogo
- protocol buffers
They currently do not support (in order of importance):
- bazel-style auto generating BUILD (where the library name is other than go_default_library)
- C/C++ interoperation except cgo (swig etc.)
- coverage
Note: The latest version of these rules (0.19.1) requires Bazel ≥ 0.23.0 to work.
The master
branch is only guaranteed to work with the latest version of Bazel.
Create a file at the top of your repository named WORKSPACE and add one of the snippets below, verbatim. This will let Bazel fetch necessary dependencies from this repository and a few others.
If you want to use the latest stable release, add the following:
load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:http.bzl", "http_archive") http_archive( name = "io_bazel_rules_go", urls = [ "https://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-mirror/github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/releases/download/0.19.1/rules_go-0.19.1.tar.gz", "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/releases/download/0.19.1/rules_go-0.19.1.tar.gz", ], sha256 = "8df59f11fb697743cbb3f26cfb8750395f30471e9eabde0d174c3aebc7a1cd39", ) load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:deps.bzl", "go_rules_dependencies", "go_register_toolchains") go_rules_dependencies() go_register_toolchains()
If you want to use a specific commit (for example, something close to
master
), add the following instead:load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:git.bzl", "git_repository") git_repository( name = "io_bazel_rules_go", remote = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go.git", commit = "f5cfc31d4e8de28bf19d0fb1da2ab8f4be0d2cde", ) load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:deps.bzl", "go_rules_dependencies", "go_register_toolchains") go_rules_dependencies() go_register_toolchains()
You can add more external dependencies to this file later (see go_repository).
Add a file named
BUILD.bazel
in the root directory of your project. In general, you need one of these files in every directory with Go code, but you need one in the root directory even if your project doesn't have any Go code there.If your project can be built with
go build
, you can generate your build files using Gazelle. If your project isn't compatible with go build or if you prefer not to use Gazelle, you can write build files by hand.
If your project can be built with go build
, you can generate and update your
build files automatically using gazelle.
Add the
bazel_gazelle
repository and its dependencies to your WORKSPACE file beforego_rules_dependencies
is called. It should look like this:load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:http.bzl", "http_archive") http_archive( name = "io_bazel_rules_go", urls = [ "https://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-mirror/github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/releases/download/0.19.1/rules_go-0.19.1.tar.gz", "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/releases/download/0.19.1/rules_go-0.19.1.tar.gz", ], sha256 = "8df59f11fb697743cbb3f26cfb8750395f30471e9eabde0d174c3aebc7a1cd39", ) load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:deps.bzl", "go_rules_dependencies", "go_register_toolchains") go_rules_dependencies() go_register_toolchains() http_archive( name = "bazel_gazelle", urls = [ "https://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-mirror/github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle/releases/download/0.18.1/bazel-gazelle-0.18.1.tar.gz", "https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle/releases/download/0.18.1/bazel-gazelle-0.18.1.tar.gz", ], sha256 = "be9296bfd64882e3c08e3283c58fcb461fa6dd3c171764fcc4cf322f60615a9b", ) load("@bazel_gazelle//:deps.bzl", "gazelle_dependencies") gazelle_dependencies()
Add the code below to the BUILD or BUILD.bazel file in the root directory of your repository. Replace the string after
prefix
with the prefix you chose for your project earlier.load("@bazel_gazelle//:def.bzl", "gazelle") # gazelle:prefix github.com/example/project gazelle(name = "gazelle")
After adding the
gazelle
rule, run the command below:bazel run //:gazelle
This will generate a
BUILD.bazel
file for each Go package in your repository. You can run the same command in the future to update existing build files with new source files, dependencies, and options.
If your project doesn't follow go build
conventions or you prefer not to use
gazelle, you can write build files by hand.
In each directory that contains Go code, create a file named
BUILD.bazel
Add a
load
statement at the top of the file for the rules you use.load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:def.bzl", "go_binary", "go_library", "go_test")
For each library, add a go_library rule like the one below. Source files are listed in
srcs
. Other packages you import are listed indeps
using Bazel labels that refer to other go_library rules. The library's import path should be specified withimportpath
.go_library( name = "go_default_library", srcs = [ "foo.go", "bar.go", ], deps = [ "//tools:go_default_library", "@org_golang_x_utils//stuff:go_default_library", ], importpath = "github.com/example/project/foo", visibility = ["//visibility:public"], )
For each test, add a go_test rule like either of the ones below. You'll need separate go_test rules for internal and external tests.
# Internal test go_test( name = "go_default_test", srcs = ["foo_test.go"], importpath = "github.com/example/project/foo", embed = [":go_default_library"], ) # External test go_test( name = "go_default_xtest", srcs = ["bar_test.go"], deps = [":go_default_library"], importpath = "github.com/example/project/foo", )
For each binary, add a go_binary rule like the one below.
go_binary( name = "foo", srcs = ["main.go"], deps = [":go_default_library"], )
For each Go repository, add a go_repository rule like the one below. This rule comes from the Gazelle repository, so you will need to load it. gazelle update-repos can generate or update these rules automatically from a go.mod or Gopkg.lock file.
load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:http.bzl", "http_archive")
# Download the Go rules
http_archive(
name = "io_bazel_rules_go",
urls = [
"https://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-mirror/github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/releases/download/0.19.1/rules_go-0.19.1.tar.gz",
"https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/releases/download/0.19.1/rules_go-0.19.1.tar.gz",
],
sha256 = "8df59f11fb697743cbb3f26cfb8750395f30471e9eabde0d174c3aebc7a1cd39",
)
# Load and call the dependencies
load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:deps.bzl", "go_rules_dependencies", "go_register_toolchains")
go_rules_dependencies()
go_register_toolchains()
# Download Gazelle
http_archive(
name = "bazel_gazelle",
urls = [
"https://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-mirror/github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle/releases/download/0.18.1/bazel-gazelle-0.18.1.tar.gz",
"https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle/releases/download/0.18.1/bazel-gazelle-0.18.1.tar.gz",
],
sha256 = "be9296bfd64882e3c08e3283c58fcb461fa6dd3c171764fcc4cf322f60615a9b",
)
# Load and call Gazelle dependencies
load("@bazel_gazelle//:deps.bzl", "gazelle_dependencies", "go_repository")
gazelle_dependencies()
# Add a go repository
go_repository(
name = "com_github_pkg_errors",
importpath = "github.com/pkg/errors",
sum = "h1:iURUrRGxPUNPdy5/HRSm+Yj6okJ6UtLINN0Q9M4+h3I=",
version = "v0.8.1",
)
Yes, this setup was deliberately chosen to be compatible with go build
.
Make sure your project appears in GOPATH
or has a go.mod file, and it should
work.
Note that go build
won't be aware of dependencies listed in WORKSPACE
,
so you may want to download your dependencies into your GOPATH
or module
cache so that your tools are aware of them. You may also need to check in
generated files.
Yes, but not directly. Modules are a dependency management feature in cmd/go,
the build system that ships with the Go SDK. Bazel uses the Go compiler and
linker in the Go toolchain, but it does not use cmd/go. You need to describe
your Go packages and executables and their dependencies in go_library
,
go_binary
, and go_test
rules written in build files, and you need to
describe your external dependencies in Bazel's WORKSPACE file.
If your project follows normal Go conventions (those required by cmd/go), you
can generate and update build files using gazelle. You can import external
dependencies from your go.mod file with a command like gazelle update-repos
-from_file=go.mod
. This will add go_repository rules to your WORKSPACE.
Each go_repository rule can download a module and generate build files for
the module's packages using Gazelle. See gazelle update-repos for more
information.
This was used to keep import paths consistent in libraries that can be built
with go build
before the importpath
attribute was available.
In order to compile and link correctly, rules_go must know the Go import path
(the string by which a package can be imported) for each library. This is now
set explicitly with the importpath
attribute. Before that attribute existed,
the import path was inferred by concatenating a string from a special
go_prefix
rule and the library's package and label name. For example, if
go_prefix
was github.com/example/project
, for a library
//foo/bar:bar
, rules_go would infer the import path as
github.com/example/project/foo/bar/bar
. The stutter at the end is
incompatible with go build
, so if the label name was go_default_library
,
the import path would not include it. So for the library
//foo/bar:go_default_library
, the import path would be
github.com/example/project/foo/bar
.
Since go_prefix
was removed and the importpath
attribute became
mandatory (see #721), the go_default_library
name no longer serves any
purpose. We may decide to stop using it in the future (see #265).
Bazel executes tests in a sandbox, which means tests don't automatically have
access to files. You must include test files using the data
attribute.
For example, if you want to include everything in the testdata
directory:
go_test(
name = "go_default_test",
srcs = ["foo_test.go"],
data = glob(["testdata/**"]),
importpath = "github.com/example/project/foo",
)
By default, tests are run in the directory of the build file that defined them.
Note that this follows the Go testing convention, not the Bazel convention
followed by other languages, which run in the repository root. This means
that you can access test files using relative paths. You can change the test
directory using the rundir
attribute. See go_test.
Gazelle will automatically add a data
attribute like the one above if you
have a testdata
directory unless it contains buildable .go files or
build files, in which case, testdata
is treated as a normal package.
You can cross-compile by setting the --platforms
flag on the command line.
For example:
$ bazel build --platforms=@io_bazel_rules_go//go/toolchain:linux_amd64 //cmd
Platform-specific sources with build tags or filename suffixes are filtered
automatically at compile time. You can selectively include platform-specific
dependencies with select
expressions (Gazelle does this automatically).
go_library(
name = "go_default_library",
srcs = [
"foo_linux.go",
"foo_windows.go",
],
deps = select({
"@io_bazel_rules_go//go/platform:linux_amd64": [
"//bar_linux:go_default_library",
],
"@io_bazel_rules_go//go/platform:windows_amd64": [
"//bar_windows:go_default_library",
],
"//conditions:default": [],
}),
)
rules_go can generate pure Go binaries for any platform the Go SDK supports. If
your project includes cgo code, has C/C++ dependencies, or requires external
linking, you'll need to write a CROSSTOOL file
for your toolchain and set the --cpu
flag on the command line, in addition
to setting --platforms
. You'll also need to set pure = "off"
on your
go_binary
. We don't fully support this yet, but people have gotten this to
work in some cases.
In some cases, you may want to set the goos
and goarch
attributes of
go_binary
. This will cross-compile a binary for a specific platform.
This is necessary when you need to produce multiple binaries for different
platforms in a single build. However, note that select
expressions will
not work correctly when using these attributes.
The location where go_binary
writes its executable file is not stable across
rules_go versions and should not be depended upon. The parent directory includes
some configuration data in its name. This prevents Bazel's cache from being
poisoned when the same binary is built in different configurations. The binary
basename may also be platform-dependent: on Windows, we add an .exe extension.
To depend on an executable in a go_test
rule, reference the executable
in the data
attribute (to make it visible), then expand the location
in args
. The real location will be passed to the test on the command line.
For example:
go_binary(
name = "cmd",
srcs = ["cmd.go"],
)
go_test(
name = "cmd_test",
srcs = ["cmd_test.go"],
args = ["$(location :cmd)"],
data = [":cmd"],
)
See //tests/core/cross for a full example of a test that accesses a binary.
Alternatively, you can set the out
attribute of go_binary to a specific
filename. Note that when out
is set, the binary won't be cached when
changing configurations.
go_binary(
name = "cmd",
srcs = ["cmd.go"],
out = "cmd",
)
go_test(
name = "cmd_test",
srcs = ["cmd_test.go"],
data = [":cmd"],
)
References:
In order to run Bazel tests on Travis CI, you'll need to install Bazel in the
before_install
script. See our configuration file linked above.
You'll want to run Bazel with a number of flags to prevent it from consuming a huge amount of memory in the test environment.
--host_jvm_args=-Xmx500m --host_jvm_args=-Xms500m
: Set the maximum and initial JVM heap size. Keeping the same means the JVM won't spend time growing the heap. The choice of heap size is somewhat arbitrary; other configuration files recommend limits as high as 2500m. Higher values mean a faster build, but higher risk of OOM kill.--bazelrc=.test-bazelrc
: Use a Bazel configuration file specific to Travis CI. You can put most of the remaining options in here.build --spawn_strategy=standalone --genrule_strategy=standalone
: Disable sandboxing for the build. Sandboxing may fail inside of Travis's containers because themount
system call is not permitted.test --test_strategy=standalone
: Disable sandboxing for tests as well.--local_resources=1536,1.5,0.5
: Set Bazel limits on available RAM in MB, available cores for compute, and available cores for I/O. Higher values mean a faster build, but higher contention and risk of OOM kill.--noshow_progress
: Suppress progress messages in output for cleaner logs.--verbose_failures
: Get more detailed failure messages.--test_output=errors
: Show test stderr in the Travis log. Normally, test output is written log files which Travis does not save or report.
Downloads on Travis are relatively slow (the network is heavily
contended), so you'll want to minimize the amount of network I/O in
your build. Downloading Bazel and a Go SDK is a huge part of that. To
avoid downloading a Go SDK, you may request a container with a
preinstalled version of Go in your .travis.yml
file, then call
go_register_toolchains(go_version = "host")
in a Travis-specific
WORKSPACE
file.
You may be tempted to put Bazel's cache in your Travis cache. Although this can speed up your build significantly, Travis stores its cache on Amazon, and it takes a very long time to transfer. Clean builds seem faster in practice.
rules_go only supports official releases of the Go SDK. However, we do have an easy way for developers to try out beta releases.
In your WORKSPACE file, add a call go_download_sdk like the one below. This
must be named go_sdk
, and it must come before the call to
go_register_toolchains.
load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:deps.bzl",
"go_download_sdk",
"go_register_toolchains",
"go_rules_dependencies",
)
go_rules_dependencies()
go_download_sdk(
name = "go_sdk",
sdks = {
"darwin_amd64": ("go1.10beta1.darwin-amd64.tar.gz", "8c2a4743359f4b14bcfaf27f12567e3cbfafc809ed5825a2238c0ba45db3a8b4"),
"linux_amd64": ("go1.10beta1.linux-amd64.tar.gz", "ec7a10b5bf147a8e06cf64e27384ff3c6d065c74ebd8fdd31f572714f74a1055"),
},
)
go_register_toolchains()
You can run: bazel build @io_bazel_rules_go//:go_info
which outputs
go_info_report
with information like the used Golang version.
See Avoiding conflicts in the proto documentation.
The go_rules_dependencies macro used to declare all dependencies needed
to generate and compile protocol buffers. Managing this got too complicated,
and the declarations caused confusion in workspaces that declared different
versions of the same repositories, so these dependencies are no longer
declared in go_rules_dependencies
. They must be declared separately.
In order to build anything that uses protoc
(including proto_library
),
you must declare a repository rule for com_google_protobuf
. See
Proto dependencies for an example.
In order to build anything that uses gRPC, several additional repositories must be declared. See gRPC dependencies for instructions and an example.
This is not supported. When using go_proto_library with the
@io_bazel_rules_go//proto:go_grpc
compiler, an implicit dependency is added
on @org_golang_google_grpc//:go_default_library
. If you link another copy of
the same package from //vendor/google.golang.org/grpc:go_default_library
or anywhere else, you may experience conflicts at compile or run-time.
If you're using Gazelle with proto rule generation enabled, imports of
google.golang.org/grpc
will be automatically resolved to
@org_golang_google_grpc//:go_default_library
to avoid conflicts. The
vendored gRPC should be ignored in this case.
If you specifically need to use a vendored gRPC package, it's best to avoid
using go_proto_library
altogether. You can check in pre-generated .pb.go
files and build them with go_library
rules. Gazelle will generate these
rules when proto rule generation is disabled (add # gazelle:proto
disable_global
to your root build file).