Scala Rules for Bazel

Overview

Bazel is a tool for building and testing software and can handle large, multi-language projects at scale.

This project defines core build rules for Scala that can be used to build, test, and package Scala projects.

Rules

Getting started

Install Bazel, see the compatibility table.
Add the following to your WORKSPACE file and update the githash if needed:

rules_scala_version="69d3c5b5d9b51537231746e93b4383384c9ebcf4" # update this as needed

load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:http.bzl", "http_archive")
http_archive(
    name = "io_bazel_rules_scala",
    strip_prefix = "rules_scala-%s" % rules_scala_version,
    type = "zip",
    url = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_scala/archive/%s.zip" % rules_scala_version,
)

load("@io_bazel_rules_scala//scala:toolchains.bzl", "scala_register_toolchains")
scala_register_toolchains()

load("@io_bazel_rules_scala//scala:scala.bzl", "scala_repositories")
scala_repositories()

protobuf_version="09745575a923640154bcf307fba8aedff47f240a"
protobuf_version_sha256="416212e14481cff8fd4849b1c1c1200a7f34808a54377e22d7447efdf54ad758"

http_archive(
    name = "com_google_protobuf",
    url = "https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/archive/%s.tar.gz" % protobuf_version,
    strip_prefix = "protobuf-%s" % protobuf_version,
    sha256 = protobuf_version_sha256,
)

# bazel-skylib 0.8.0 released 2019.03.20 (https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-skylib/releases/tag/0.8.0)
skylib_version = "0.8.0"
http_archive(
    name = "bazel_skylib",
    type = "tar.gz",
    url = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-skylib/releases/download/{}/bazel-skylib.{}.tar.gz".format (skylib_version, skylib_version),
    sha256 = "2ef429f5d7ce7111263289644d233707dba35e39696377ebab8b0bc701f7818e",
)

This will load the rules_scala repository at the commit sha rules_scala_version into your Bazel project and register a Scala toolchain at the default Scala version (2.11.12)

Then in your BUILD file just add the following so the rules will be available:

load("@io_bazel_rules_scala//scala:scala.bzl", "scala_library", "scala_binary", "scala_test")

You may wish to have these rules loaded by default using bazel's prelude. You can add the above to the file tools/build_rules/prelude_bazel in your repo (don't forget to have a, possibly empty, BUILD file there) and then it will be automatically prepended to every BUILD file in the workspace.

To run with a persistent worker (much faster), you need to add

build --strategy=Scalac=worker
build --worker_sandboxing

to your command line, or to enable by default for building/testing add it to your .bazelrc.

Selecting Scala version

Rules scala supports all minor versions of Scala 2.11/2.12. By default Scala 2.11.12 is used and to use another version you need to specify it when calling scala_repositories. scala_repositories takes a tuple (scala_version, scala_version_jar_shas) as a parameter where scala_version is the scala version and scala_version_jar_shas is a dict with sha256 hashes for the maven artifacts scala_library, scala_reflect and scala_compiler:

scala_repositories((
    "2.12.8",
    {
       "scala_compiler": "f34e9119f45abd41e85b9e121ba19dd9288b3b4af7f7047e86dc70236708d170",
       "scala_library": "321fb55685635c931eba4bc0d7668349da3f2c09aee2de93a70566066ff25c28",
       "scala_reflect": "4d6405395c4599ce04cea08ba082339e3e42135de9aae2923c9f5367e957315a"
    }
))

If you're using any of the rules twitter_scrooge, tut_repositories, scala_proto_repositories or specs2_junit_repositories you also need to specify scala_version for them. See ./test_version/WORKSPACE.template for an example workspace using another scala version.

Bazel compatible versions

bazel	rules_scala gitsha
1.0.0	HEAD
0.28.0	HEAD
0.23.x	ca655e5a330cbf1d66ce1d9baa63522752ec6011
0.22.x	f3113fb6e9e35cb8f441d2305542026d98afc0a2
0.16.x	f3113fb6e9e35cb8f441d2305542026d98afc0a2
0.15.x	3b9ab9be31ac217d3337c709cb6bfeb89c8dcbb1
0.14.x	3b9ab9be31ac217d3337c709cb6bfeb89c8dcbb1
0.13.x	3c987b6ae8a453886759b132f1572c0efca2eca2

Usage with bazel-deps

Bazel-deps allows you to generate bazel dependencies transitively for maven artifacts. Generally we don't want bazel-deps to fetch scala artifacts from maven but instead use the ones we get from calling scala_repositories. The artifacts can be overridden in the dependencies file used by bazel-deps:

replacements:
  org.scala-lang:
    scala-library:
      lang: scala/unmangled
      target: "@io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_library//:io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_library"
    scala-reflect:
      lang: scala/unmangled
      target: "@io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_reflect//:io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_reflect"
    scala-compiler:
      lang: scala/unmangled
      target: "@io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_compiler//:io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_compiler"

  org.scala-lang.modules:
    scala-parser-combinators:
      lang: scala
      target:
        "@io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_parser_combinators//:io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_parser_combinators"
    scala-xml:
      lang: scala
      target:
        "@io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_xml//:io_bazel_rules_scala_scala_xml"

[Experimental] Using strict-deps

Bazel pushes towards explicit and minimal dependencies to keep BUILD file hygiene and allow for targets to refactor their dependencies without fear of downstream breaking. Currently rules_scala does this at the cost of having cryptic scalac errors when one mistakenly depends on a transitive dependency or, as more often the case for some, a transitive dependency is needed to please scalac itself. To learn more about the motivation of strict-deps itself you can visit this Bazel blog post on the subject.

To use it just add --strict_java_deps=WARN|ERROR to your bazel invocation. In both cases of WARN or ERROR you will get the following text in the event of a violation:

...
Target '//some_package:transitive_dependency' is used but isn't explicitly declared, please add it to the deps.
You can use the following buildozer command:
buildozer 'add deps //some_package:transitive_dependency' //some_other_package:transitive_dependency_user

Note that if you have buildozer installed you can just run the last line and have it automatically apply the fix for you.

Caveats:

Extra builds- when strict-deps is on the transitive dependencies are inputs to the compilation action which means you can potentially have more build triggers for changes the cross the ijar boundary
Label propagation- since label of targets are needed for the clear message and since it's not currently supported by JavaInfo from bazel we manually propagate it. This means that the error messages have a significantly lower grade if you don't use one of the scala rules or scala_import (since they don't propagate these labels)
javac outputs incorrect targets due to a problem we're tracing down. Practically we've noticed it's pretty trivial to understand the correct target (i.e. it's almost a formatting problem)

Note: Currently strict-deps is protected by a feature toggle but we're strongly considering making it the default behavior as java_* rules do.

[Experimental] Unused dependency checking

To allow for better caching and faster builds we want to minimize the direct dependencies of our targets. Unused dependency checking makes sure that all targets specified as direct dependencies are actually used. If unused_dependency_checker_mode is set to either error or warn you will get the following message for any dependencies that are not used:

error: Target '//some_package:unused_dep' is specified as a dependency to //target:target but isn't used, please remove it from the deps.
You can use the following buildozer command:
buildozer 'remove deps //some_package:unused_dep' //target:target

Currently unused dependency checking and strict-deps can't be used simultaneously, if both are set only strict-deps will run.

Unused dependency checking can either be enabled globally for all targets using a scala toolchain or for individual targets using the unused_dependency_checker_mode attribute. The feature is still experimental and there can thus be cases where it works incorrectly, in these cases you can enable unused dependency checking globally through a toolchain and override individual misbehaving targets using the attribute.

Building from source

Test & Build:

bash test_all.sh

You can also use:

bazel test //test/...

Note bazel test //... will not work since we have a sub-folder on the root folder which is meant to be used in a failure scenario in the integration tests. Similarly to only build you should use bazel build //src/... due to that folder.

Updates

This section contains a list of updates that might require action from the user.

043ba58: Updates default scrooge version to 18.6.0
76d4ab9: Updates naming for scala artifact replacements in bazel-deps. See Usage with bazel-deps

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more info.

Adopters

Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of companies that use rules_scala in production. Don't see yours? You can add it in a PR!

jin / rules_scala-1