Installing Bazel

See the instructions for installing Bazel on:

• Ubuntu Linux (16.04, 15.10, and 14.04)
• Mac OS X
• Windows (highly experimental)

For other platforms, you can try to compile from source.

Required Java version:

• Java JDK 8 or later (JDK 7 is still supported but deprecated).

Extras:

• Bash completion
• zsh completion

For more information on using Bazel, see Getting Started with Bazel.

Using Bazel with JDK 7 (deprecated)

Bazel version 0.1.0 runs without any change with JDK 7. However, future version will stop supporting JDK 7 when our CI cannot build for it anymore. The installer for JDK 7 for Bazel versions after 0.1.0 is labeled

./bazel-version-jdk7-installer-os.sh

If you wish to use JDK 7, follow the same steps as for JDK 8 but with the jdk7 installer or using a different APT repository as described here.

Getting bash completion

Bazel comes with a bash completion script, which the installer copies into the bin directory. If you ran the installer with --user, this will be $HOME/.bazel/bin. If you ran the installer as root, this will be /usr/local/bazel/bin.

Copy the bazel-complete.bash script to your completion folder (/etc/bash_completion.d directory under Ubuntu). If you don't have a completion folder, you can copy it wherever suits you and insert source /path/to/bazel-complete.bash in your ~/.bashrc file (under OS X, put it in your ~/.bash_profile file).

If you built Bazel from source, the bash completion target is in the //scripts package:

1. Build it with Bazel: bazel build //scripts:bazel-complete.bash.
2. Copy the script bazel-bin/scripts/bazel-complete.bash to one of the locations described above.

Getting zsh completion

Bazel also comes with a zsh completion script. To install it:

1. Add this script to a directory on your $fpath:

   fpath[1,0]=~/.zsh/completion/
   mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completion/
   cp scripts/zsh_completion/_bazel ~/.zsh/completion
   

   You may have to call rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit the first time to make it work.

2. Optionally, add the following to your .zshrc.

   # This way the completion script does not have to parse Bazel's options
   # repeatedly.  The directory in cache-path must be created manually.
   zstyle ':completion:*' use-cache on
   zstyle ':completion:*' cache-path ~/.zsh/cache