bazelbuild
Add support for patches to `git_repository` in `source.json`
Description of the feature request:
As defined in https://bazel.build/external/registry, the git_repository type doesn't support patches, only archive does.
I am trying to migrate my project to use bazel modules, but I have a lot of third-party deps that don't support bazel at all. For most of these it's possible add a small build_file_content to new_git_repository, but it seems there's no analog for this with bazel modules. For example, I have this currently in my WORKSPACE file:
new_git_repository(
name="ctti",
build_file_content="""
cc_library(
name="ctti",
hdrs=glob(["include/**/*"]),
includes=["include"],
visibility = ["//visibility:public"],
)""",
remote="https://github.com/Manu343726/ctti",
commit="2c7ab7dcd114c20802656b527e28b6e91e698e14",
shallow_since="1533063710 +0200",
)
To create a registry entry for this in my local registry, I can't use archive as there's no published release for this git hash, and I can't use git_repository because the repo doesn't have a BUILD or MODULE.bazel file. Thus my only option (if I want a registry) is to either make a release and host it somewhere myself, or fork the git repo and commit the BUILD/MODULE.bazel files to that fork. It would be much nicer if I could contain all the module-specific changes in a single location (my local registry).
Even nicer would be some syntactic sugar allowing me to specify build_file_content in the MODULE.bazel in the registry without having to add a BUILD or MODULE.bazel files to the repo
Which category does this issue belong to?
No response
What underlying problem are you trying to solve with this feature?
Represent third-party dependencies that don't natively support bazel as modules in my own local registry so I can use these modules from multiple repositories without having to copy-paste a lot of setup code
Which operating system are you running Bazel on?
ubuntu-22.04
What is the output of bazel info release?
release 7.2.0
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 ?
No response
Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?
No response
Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?
No response
For this kind of dependency, you could probably just use git_repository via use_repo_rule. Does that work for you? The advantage over making it a module is that your build file can directly reference any other deps of your root module.
In my case I have multiple "root" modules, and I want to have a shared set of third-party modules that are easy to access (e.g. via bazel_dep). I don't see how to make use_repo_rule work in a registry entry as it creates a new repo, whereas I want to populate the current module
This sounds like a reasonable FR that's also quite newbie-friendly. So PRs welcome :)
hey all, also adding support for overlay would be great ! See https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/pull/22525
For this kind of dependency, you could probably just use git_repository via use_repo_rule. Does that work for you? The advantage over making it a module is that your build file can directly reference any other deps of your root module. Is this still the issue ?@fmeum @Wyverald
For this kind of dependency, you could probably just use git_repository via use_repo_rule. Does that work for you?
The downside for that is you end up needing to maintain the parts of the build in multiple places (i.e. every single project that depends on that other library). The BCR has something like a few hundred modules with at least one version having patch files adding a MODULE.bazel, so it seems to be a common thing to publicly publish external Bazel'ification of libraries that don't provide first party support. Doing that via use_repo_rule and git_repository is not practical for all the reason bzlmod was created in the first place.
