Bazel Modules (Bzlmod) Migration for Gerrit and Plugins

[David Ostrovsky]

Dear Gerrit Community

Recently, JGit, Gerrit core and its plugin ecosystem have been migrated to Bazel Modules (Bzlmod), and the Bazel version has been upgraded from 7.x to 9.x.

At GerritForge, I gave an internal presentation covering the migration, including the motivation, challenges, and lessons learned for both Gerrit core and plugins.

The session was recorded, and I would like to share it with the community.

In addition, we held follow-up Q&A sessions. Recordings of these sessions are available in the comments section of the presentation video.

Topics covered include:

• Overview of Bazel Modules (Bzlmod)
• Migration strategy for Gerrit and JGit
• Plugin migration approach
• Dependency management and common pitfalls
• Lessons learned and current status

I hope this material is helpful for Gerrit contributors and plugin authors preparing for Bazel 9+.

Presentation slides: https://ostrovsky.org/gerrit/bzlmod/bzlmod_presentation.html

Presentation recording (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGtRosf-_K0

Feedback and questions are welcome.

Best regards,
David

[Austin Schuh]

Looks great, this is a very necessary migration.  Thanks for kicking it off.

Consider publishing com_googlesource_gerrit_bazlets to bcr.  I've pushed a couple of other modules before, and the bazel team works hard to make it easy for anyone to contribute modules.  Most/all my contributions merged within a day with very reasonable comments around capturing where things came from, and hints for how the next person can update them.

 

Best regards,
David

Austin