Preset for bazelrc

Bazel has a tremendously large number of flags. Many are obscure, many are important to use, and many have an undesirable default value.

This rule generates a custom bazelrc file that matches your Bazel version and makes it convenient to vendor into your repo. We call this a "preset".

[!NOTE] Preset changes can cause behavior changes in your repo that are undesirable or even break the build. Since vendoring is required, changes will be code-reviewed when they arrive in your repo, rather than as an invisible side-effect of updating the version of bazelrc-presets. For this reason, this rule does not strictly follow Semantic Versioning.

Bazel options may be stored in *.bazelrc files, in several places on disk. Read the Bazel bazelrc documentation.

🎙️ This rule was featured on the Aspect Insights podcast:

Install

1. Add bazelrc-preset.bzl to your MODULE.bazel file.

   bazel_dep(name = "bazelrc-preset.bzl", version = "...")

2. Call it from a BUILD file, for example in tools/BUILD:

   load("@bazelrc-preset.bzl", "bazelrc_preset")
   
   bazelrc_preset(
       name = "preset",
   )

3. Create the preset by running bazel run //tools:preset.update. Note that you don't need to remember the command. A test target preset.update_test is also created, which prints the command if the file is missing or has outdated contents.

4. Import it into your project's /.bazelrc file. We suggest you add it at the top, so that project-specific flags may override values. See https://bazel.build/configure/best-practices#bazelrc-file

   You can copy this template to get started:

   ########################
   # Import bazelrc presets
   import %workspace%/tools/preset.bazelrc
   ...
   
   ########################
   # Project-specific flags
   # This is also a place to override settings from the presets
   
   ...
   
   ########################
   # User preferences
   # Load any settings & overrides specific to the current user from `user.bazelrc`.
   # This file should appear in `.gitignore` so that settings are not shared with team members.
   # This should be last statement in this config so the user configuration overrides anything above.
   try-import %workspace%/user.bazelrc

5. Some flags are enabled only under a given config. For example, many flags apply only when running on CI. Configure your CI system to always pass --config=ci when running Bazel (for example, put it in the system bazelrc on CI runner machines).

Migrating to stricter flags

Bazel major releases include flag-flips. We provide a strict preset that includes all flags that will be flipped in the upcoming major release. To opt-in to these flags, you can set the strict attribute to True when calling bazelrc_preset.

load("@bazelrc-preset.bzl", "bazelrc_preset")

bazelrc_preset(
    name = "preset",
    strict = True, # Enable this to opt-in to flags that are flipped in the upcoming major release
)

Bazelisk provides extra command-line options to migrate to stricter flags. A common migration pattern is:

1. Run bazelisk --migrate build --nobuild //... to try upgrading new strict flags.
2. For flags that don't work, either
   • disable them by explicitly setting the value in your .bazelrc
   • fix the issues they report
3. Add common --@bazelrc-preset.bzl//:strict to the project .bazelrc. This is a superset of running bazelisk --strict build ...

Project-specific Presets

If your project defines specific flags that users should set, you can define them in your project as follows:

1. Define your own flags using the same data structure as flags.bzl or tests/extra_test_presets.bzl.

2. Add a bazelrc_preset_test to make sure your presets format is correct.

   bazelrc_preset_test(
       name = "test_project_preset",
       extra_presets = CUSTOM_PROJECT_PRESETS,
   )

3. Any user of your project can now consume your presets and add them to their presets

   load("@my_project//:flags.bzl", "CUSTOM_PROJECT_PRESETS")
   
   bazelrc_preset(
       name = "preset",
       extra_presets = CUSTOM_PROJECT_PRESETS
   )

API Documentation

https://registry.bazel.build/docs/bazelrc-preset.bzl

References and Credits

This was originally a feature of Aspect's bazel-lib: https://github.com/bazel-contrib/bazel-lib/tree/main/.aspect/bazelrc

This rule is maintained by the Rules Authors SIG, see https://github.com/bazel-contrib/SIG-rules-authors/issues/106