File convertor

[Alexander Kornilov]

I am newbie in Bazel world and need some help.
My task is support of new kind of files in C++ project. I have file preprocessor: cxx2cpp <input *.cxx file> <output *.cpp> which can convert single .cxx to to .cpp file. So I need convert some set of *.cxx files and pass generated .cpp files to cc_binary/cc_library.
I have read about rules:
https://bazel.build/rules/rules-tutorial
https://bazel.build/extending/rules
https://bazel.build/reference/be/general#genrule

But still don't understand what is correct way to do it.
Could you please advise right way to solve my task?

[Alexandre Rostovtsev]

There are 3 ways to solve this: you can write a symbolic macro which calls a genrule, a legacy macro which calls a genrule, or you can write your own rule. A macro would be shorter and easier to write; a rule is better if in future you want more complex behavior (such as changing the cxx2cpp command line depending on a flag you passed to bazel), and will give your users better error messages and `bazel query` support.

For symbolic macros (bazel 8 and newer only), see https://bazel.build/rules/macro-tutorial

For legacy macros (all bazel versions), see https://bazel.build/rules/legacy-macro-tutorial

For a simple example of a rule which calls a command-line tool, see https://github.com/bazelbuild/examples/blob/main/rules/actions_run/execute.bzl

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