Does bazel support preprocessing?

[zero]

I want to automatically generate proto build files and write a python script to automatically generate build files. It works well and next step I want to integrate it into bazel.

I can think of the following ways
1. genrule, the questions is how can I ensue it will run before compile the proto files

2. create a rule and  use like "bazel run //:buildifier"

Thanks for any advice!

[Xudong Yang]

Bazel doesn't touch files in the source tree during a build, so this is by design impossible.

However, bazel-gazelle could very much meet your needs. It originated as a BUILD file generator for Go, but can be extended for many other languages.

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[Kirill Zabelin]

If you want to automatically generate bazel BUILD files you also probably can take a look at repository_rule, which allows you to generate a new workspace and then reference it in the main workspace. But since repository_rule works in load phase in impl function you can't use any target/Providers from analysis phase.

Thanks,

Kirill

[zero]

Hi Kirill, The method you say is something like "create a rule and  use like "bazel run //:buildifier"". And yes, I need to analysis dependency for the proto. It's not complicated because its dependencies are simple.

bazel-gazelle seems to be an implemented tool, which is support protobuf. I will learn if it meets my needs.

Thanks for your advice!