"copy files" rule?

[ronnie...@oracle.com]

Is there a built in rule that does nothing but copy a directory to the output directory (runfiles)?  If not, I'd like to propose a "copy_files" rule. 

An example use case would be a configuration type package that produces no binary and has no buildable code, but contains files that are consumed by other packages (at runtime).

This is almost possible with the "java_library" rule used with "data" -- but it also produces an unnecessary jar.

[Brian Silverman]

Are you looking for "filegroup"? Just building a filegroup won't actually copy any files, but if you put a filegroup in other rules' "data" attributes, the files will all get copied.

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[Ronnie Roller]

Filegroup will work, yes. But that's where I'm having issues -- I can't find a suitable rule that will simply and only, copy the filegroup to the output directory. 

Java_library almost works, but it also produces a jar. 

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[Brian Silverman]

Bazel doesn't really have a way to do that, and I don't really see how it can be done usefully. The first fundamental problem that comes to mind is there will be no way of differentiating between the output files you want and stale files that are no longer being built.

If you really want, writing a genrule to do this would be fairly easy. If you want to do anything more complicated (like depend on the output files, or manipulate the file paths in any way more complicated than adding another directory on), I would recommend a Skylark rule instead.

[Justine Tunney]

Do you want to copy to different directories than the original structure? A feature similar to that is currently in the works. In the meantime, you can generate ln statements at the beginning of the outputted program similar to how the app engine rules do.

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[ronnie...@oracle.com]

The same structure will be fine.  Can you point me to an example demonstrating this with "in statements"? 

When do you expect this feature to land?

[Kristina Chodorow]

Here's what the appengine rules do: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/blob/master/tools/build_rules/appengine/appengine.bzl#L76.

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 1:48 PM, <ronnie...@oracle.com> wrote:

The same structure will be fine.  Can you point me to an example demonstrating this with "in statements"? 

When do you expect this feature to land?

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