The bad behavior of pkg_tar when include_runfiles = True breaking symlink

[shepherd Ou]

I m trying to deploy some simple binary with pkg_tar such that user which can't access to the source code can use the tool out of the box(deployment tar).

I also want to reserve the dirtree and find the attribute include_runfiles useful.

However, I find a weird behavior of the tar rule:

Shared lib are duplicated in the tar: 

* One in the dir tree as we declare them by BUILD file. 

* Another is located in _solib_darwin_arm64 for MacOS (_solib_k8 for Linux).

In the project workspace, the one in _solib_darwin_arm64 is actually a symlink to the one in dir tree. However, in package tar both are duplicated files.

It introduces linking error when I run the binary. (The binary link the .so lib with relative path, e.g. @loader_path/../../../to_root/_solib_darwin_arm64/_U_S_encoded_path_to_shared_lib)

This behavior makes no sense to me.

Could anyone help? many thanks. 

[Chuck Grindel]

You may get more visibility on your question if you post and issue or discussion at https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_pkg.

[shepherd Ou]

Sure, thanks for your attention.

Let's move to: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_pkg/issues/821

Best regard