Passing variables from .bazelrc into WORKSPACE

[Robert Cauble]

Hi,

Newbie question here. What's the easiest way to define a custom variable in .bazelrc and then reference within WORKSPACE?

For context, I'm experimenting with moving a project from maven to bazel and our maven repository is password-protected. I have something like this in my WORKSPACE:

maven_install(

  ...

  repositories = [

      "https://user:pa...@maven.pkg.github.com/myorg/maven-internal"

  ]

)

It works, but the problem is we need to externalize the user:pass portion of it as this is shared among users. Would like to be able to do something like this:

maven_install(

  ...

  repositories = [

      "https://${userpass}@maven.pkg.github.com/myorg/maven-internal"

  ]

)  

Thanks,

Rob

[Alex Humesky]

There isn't really a way to add variables from the .bazelrc files (or really, from command line flags, since .bazelrc files basically contain flags) to the WORKSPACE file (though there are ways to add new command line flags that can be read in BUILD / bzl files, and WORKSPACE / repository rules can read environment variables).

But it looks like the way to do this may be to use Coursier's properties files:

https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jvm_external#usage

"Credentials for private repositories can also be specified using a property file or environment variables. See the Coursier documentation for more information."

https://get-coursier.io/docs/other-credentials.html#property-file

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[Robert Cauble]

Thank you for the pointer. I am not having luck with getting coursier properties setup. I just get a generic unauthorized message and no extra debug info (I don't know if it's even picking up my properties file).

You mentioned there was a way to add new command line flags. Do you have a pointer to that? I can give that a try instead.

[Alex Humesky]

The discussion here seemed to say that the property file ought to work:

https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jvm_external/issues/574

You may need to manually refetch the repository (bazel fetch, or do a bazel clean) if you didn't try that already (bazel probably doesn't know anything about this property file so it doesn't know to refetch the repo).

For getting more debug info see

https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jvm_external#verbose--debug-mode

You might also try the COURSIER_CREDENTIALS environment variable:

https://get-coursier.io/docs/other-credentials.html#inline

and fetch the repository again (since maven_install doesn't declare COURSIER_CREDENTIALS in the list of dependent environment variables:

https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_jvm_external/blob/00ddb84c67b58d52c89b659cf9fcceea16995a32/coursier.bzl#L1324

maybe it ought to)

You might also try adding --repo_env=COURSIER_CREDENTIALS

https://bazel.build/reference/command-line-reference#flag--repo_env

though the docs make me think that that ought not be necessary.

Regarding command line flags, they aren't available in WORKSPACE files, only in BUILD files (via config_setting() and select()) and bzl files (in rule implementations), so they can't really help here.

[Robert Cauble]

Thanks, I tried all of those but still no luck. Even the verbose logging didn't show any additional logging. 

I found one thing that  works:

1) Add load("//:repository.bzl", "USERPASS") to WORKSPACE
2) Change the repositories declaration to "https://"+USERPASS+"@maven.pkg..."
3) Add repository.bzl to .gitignore
4) Each user when they first clone a workspace does
echo 'USERPASS = "user:password"' >  repository.bzl 

(Not too terrible).

[Austin Schuh]

Is there a way to get .netrc working?
https://docs.bazel.build/versions/main/repo/http.html#http_archive-netrc
suggests it might just work, or you can override it.

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[Robert Cauble]

This is working for me now with the Coursier properties as documented. The issue was that I was using a very old version of maven_install (2.8) based on the example here:

https://docs.bazel.build/versions/5.1.0/migrate-maven.html

[Jingwen Chen]

We recently updated the doc at HEAD: https://bazel.build/migrate/maven

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