Dear Maintainer,

Building anything unsing Bazel in debspawn or sbuild fails. Never had
such issues with those tools building any other packages, so I think
that this is an issue with Bazel. Here is a minimal example package:
https://lebihan.pl/files/cpp-tutorial-stage1.tar.xz

This is the relevant log from debspawn:

make[1]: Entering directory '/srv/build/cpp-tutorial-stage1-1'
bazel build //main:hello-world
FATAL: mkdir('/nonexistent/.cache/bazel/_bazel_builder'): (error: 13): Permission denied
make[1]: *** [debian/rules:7: override_dh_auto_build] Error 36
make[1]: Leaving directory '/srv/build/cpp-tutorial-stage1-1'
make: *** [debian/rules:4: binary] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2
Command `dpkg-buildpackage --changes-option=-DDistribution=sid` failed.

This is the relevant log from sbuild:

make[1]: Entering directory '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>'
bazel build //main:hello-world
FATAL: mkdir('/sbuild-nonexistent/.cache/bazel/_bazel_michel'): (error: 13): Permission denied
make[1]: *** [debian/rules:7: override_dh_auto_build] Error 36
make[1]: Leaving directory '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>'
make: *** [debian/rules:4: binary] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2

Michel Le Bihan

Hi Michel and thanks for the bug report!

Unfortunately, this is currently a known limitation. Our packaging plan [1]
outlines how we plan to enable this functionality in Phase 3 (we are
currently in Phase 2). The current bazel-bootstrap package is able to build
any normal software just like the upstream Bazel, but can not (yet) build a
Debian package. Our bullseye+1 plan is to complete Phase 3 which *will*
allow that functionality.

There are two main blockers to this functionality at the moment:

1) The full (non-bootstrap) variant of Bazel will be much cleaner and allow
for implementing Debian package builds more easily. That needs a few more
Bazel-specific dependencies before it can be packaged. That should be
complete in the next few months.

2) Upstream Bazel is working on some updates which will simplify using
local packages, as we need to do in building a Debian package. This will
also greatly simplify the Debian portion of the effort. I've recently been
considering implementing that functionality in Debian early if it seems to
be stable.

Again, thanks for your interest and I welcome you to join our team[2][3] if
you're interested in helping to improve Bazel functionality in Debian more
quickly!

Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 18:03:12 -0500

Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 18:03:12 -0500