Bug#782654: Bug#838416: ITP: bazel -- Fast and correct automated build system by Google

[Kyle Moffett <kyle@moffetthome.net>]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 9:29 AM, Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org> wrote:
> > Also, I would be pretty keen on seeing roughtime packaged
> > in Debian, so don't hesitate to ping me in you need a
> > co-maintainer.
>
> Well, if you could package Bazel… :)

Unfortunately, there's more work than just "packaging" Bazel.  Just to
package Bazel, the open issues are:
  (1) Getting Bazel's dependencies packaged in Debian, with acceptable versions.
  (2) Fixing the Bazel build process to use Debian JAR files, rather
than pre-built versions shipped with Bazel.
  (3) Fixing the Bazel build process to comply with Debian policy
around static linking and self-extracting binaries.

But... even with that, Bazel cannot be used to _build_ a Debian
package, because it does not create Debian-policy-compliant binaries,
and it does not support all the Debian cross-compiler flags.  In order
to fix that, a bunch more integration work is needed, including
rewriting the Bazel "architecture specs" to use Debian architecture
names or tuples instead, and to fix the built-in rules to properly
support fully-dynamic linking and library installation paths.

So, yeah, it's a lot of work, and I haven't really had time to make
much progress.

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett