This page is the reference manual for the Bazel Query Language used
when you use bazel query
to analyze build dependencies. It also
describes the output formats bazel query
supports.
For practical use cases, see the Bazel Query How-To.
Additional query reference
In addition to query
, which runs on the post-loading phase target graph,
Bazel includes action graph query and configurable query.
Action graph query
The action graph query (aquery
) operates on the post-analysis Configured
Target Graph and exposes information about Actions, Artifacts, and
their relationships. aquery
is useful when you are interested in the
properties of the Actions/Artifacts generated from the Configured Target Graph.
For example, the actual commands run and their inputs, outputs, and mnemonics.
For more details, see the aquery reference.
Configurable query
Traditional Bazel query runs on the post-loading phase target graph and
therefore has no concept of configurations and their related concepts. Notably,
it doesn't correctly resolve select statements
and instead returns all possible resolutions of selects. However, the
configurable query environment, cquery
, properly handles configurations but
doesn't provide all of the functionality of this original query.
For more details, see the cquery reference.
Examples
How do people use bazel query
? Here are typical examples:
Why does the //foo
tree depend on //bar/baz
?
Show a path:
somepath(foo/..., //bar/baz:all)
What C++ libraries do all the foo
tests depend on that
the foo_bin
target does not?
kind("cc_library", deps(kind(".*test rule", foo/...)) except deps(//foo:foo_bin))
Tokens: The lexical syntax
Expressions in the query language are composed of the following tokens:
Keywords, such as
let
. Keywords are the reserved words of the language, and each of them is described below. The complete set of keywords is:Words, such as "
foo/...
" or ".*test rule
" or "//bar/baz:all
". If a character sequence is "quoted" (begins and ends with a single-quote ' or begins and ends with a double-quote "), it is a word. If a character sequence is not quoted, it may still be parsed as a word. Unquoted words are sequences of characters drawn from the alphabet characters A-Za-z, the numerals 0-9, and the special characters*/@.-_:$~[]
(asterisk, forward slash, at, period, hyphen, underscore, colon, dollar sign, tilde, left square brace, right square brace). However, unquoted words may not start with a hyphen-
or asterisk*
even though relative target names may start with those characters. As a special rule meant to simplify the handling of labels referring to external repositories, unquoted words that start with@@
may contain+
characters.Unquoted words also may not include the characters plus sign
+
or equals sign=
, even though those characters are permitted in target names. When writing code that generates query expressions, target names should be quoted.Quoting is necessary when writing scripts that construct Bazel query expressions from user-supplied values.
//foo:bar+wiz # WRONG: scanned as //foo:bar + wiz. //foo:bar=wiz # WRONG: scanned as //foo:bar = wiz. "//foo:bar+wiz" # OK. "//foo:bar=wiz" # OK.
Note that this quoting is in addition to any quoting that may be required by your shell, such as:
bazel query ' "//foo:bar=wiz" ' # single-quotes for shell, double-quotes for Bazel.
Keywords and operators, when quoted, are treated as ordinary words. For example,
some
is a keyword but "some" is a word. Bothfoo
and "foo" are words.However, be careful when using single or double quotes in target names. When quoting one or more target names, use only one type of quotes (either all single or all double quotes).
The following are examples of what the Java query string will be:
'a"'a' # WRONG: Error message: unclosed quotation. "a'"a" # WRONG: Error message: unclosed quotation. '"a" + 'a'' # WRONG: Error message: unexpected token 'a' after query expression '"a" + ' "'a' + "a"" # WRONG: Error message: unexpected token 'a' after query expression ''a' + ' "a'a" # OK. 'a"a' # OK. '"a" + "a"' # OK "'a' + 'a'" # OK
We chose this syntax so that quote marks aren't needed in most cases. The (unusual)
".*test rule"
example needs quotes: it starts with a period and contains a space. Quoting"cc_library"
is unnecessary but harmless.Punctuation, such as parens
()
, period.
and comma,
. Words containing punctuation (other than the exceptions listed above) must be quoted.
Whitespace characters outside of a quoted word are ignored.
Bazel query language concepts
The Bazel query language is a language of expressions. Every expression evaluates to a partially-ordered set of targets, or equivalently, a graph (DAG) of targets. This is the only datatype.
Set and graph refer to the same datatype, but emphasize different aspects of it, for example:
- Set: The partial order of the targets is not interesting.
- Graph: The partial order of targets is significant.
Cycles in the dependency graph
Build dependency graphs should be acyclic.
The algorithms used by the query language are intended for use in acyclic graphs, but are robust against cycles. The details of how cycles are treated are not specified and should not be relied upon.
Implicit dependencies
In addition to build dependencies that are defined explicitly in BUILD
files,
Bazel adds additional implicit dependencies to rules. For example
every Java rule implicitly depends on the JavaBuilder. Implicit dependencies
are established using attributes that start with $
and they
cannot be overridden in BUILD
files.
Per default bazel query
takes implicit dependencies into account
when computing the query result. This behavior can be changed with
the --[no]implicit_deps
option. Note that, as query does not consider
configurations, potential toolchains are never considered.
Soundness
Bazel query language expressions operate over the build
dependency graph, which is the graph implicitly defined by all
rule declarations in all BUILD
files. It is important to understand
that this graph is somewhat abstract, and does not constitute a
complete description of how to perform all the steps of a build. In
order to perform a build, a configuration is required too;
see the configurations
section of the User's Guide for more detail.
The result of evaluating an expression in the Bazel query language is true for all configurations, which means that it may be a conservative over-approximation, and not exactly precise. If you use the query tool to compute the set of all source files needed during a build, it may report more than are actually necessary because, for example, the query tool will include all the files needed to support message translation, even though you don't intend to use that feature in your build.
On the preservation of graph order
Operations preserve any ordering
constraints inherited from their subexpressions. You can think of
this as "the law of conservation of partial order". Consider an
example: if you issue a query to determine the transitive closure of
dependencies of a particular target, the resulting set is ordered
according to the dependency graph. If you filter that set to
include only the targets of file
kind, the same
transitive partial ordering relation holds between every
pair of targets in the resulting subset - even though none of
these pairs is actually directly connected in the original graph.
(There are no file-file edges in the build dependency graph).
However, while all operators preserve order, some operations, such as the set operations don't introduce any ordering constraints of their own. Consider this expression:
deps(x) union y
The order of the final result set is guaranteed to preserve all the
ordering constraints of its subexpressions, namely, that all the
transitive dependencies of x
are correctly ordered with
respect to each other. However, the query guarantees nothing about
the ordering of the targets in y
, nor about the
ordering of the targets in deps(x)
relative to those in
y
(except for those targets in
y
that also happen to be in deps(x)
).
Operators that introduce ordering constraints include:
allpaths
, deps
, rdeps
, somepath
, and the target pattern wildcards
package:*
, dir/...
, etc.
Sky query
Sky Query is a mode of query that operates over a specified universe scope.
Special functions available only in SkyQuery
Sky Query mode has the additional query functions allrdeps
and
rbuildfiles
. These functions operate over the entire
universe scope (which is why they don't make sense for normal Query).
Specifying a universe scope
Sky Query mode is activated by passing the following two flags:
(--universe_scope
or --infer_universe_scope
) and
--order_output=no
.
--universe_scope=<target_pattern1>,...,<target_patternN>
tells query to
preload the transitive closure of the target pattern specified by the target patterns, which can
be both additive and subtractive. All queries are then evaluated in this "scope". In particular,
the allrdeps
and
rbuildfiles
operators only return results from this scope.
--infer_universe_scope
tells Bazel to infer a value for --universe_scope
from the query expression. This inferred value is the list of unique target patterns in the
query expression, but this might not be what you want. For example:
bazel query --infer_universe_scope --order_output=no "allrdeps(//my:target)"
The list of unique target patterns in this query expression is ["//my:target"]
, so
Bazel treats this the same as the invocation:
bazel query --universe_scope=//my:target --order_output=no "allrdeps(//my:target)"
But the result of that query with --universe_scope
is only //my:target
;
none of the reverse dependencies of //my:target
are in the universe, by
construction! On the other hand, consider:
bazel query --infer_universe_scope --order_output=no "tests(//a/... + b/...) intersect allrdeps(siblings(rbuildfiles(my/starlark/file.bzl)))"
This is a meaningful query invocation that is trying to compute the test targets in the
tests
expansion of the targets under some directories that
transitively depend on targets whose definition uses a certain .bzl
file. Here,
--infer_universe_scope
is a convenience, especially in the case where the choice of
--universe_scope
would otherwise require you to parse the query expression yourself.
So, for query expressions that use universe-scoped operators like
allrdeps
and
rbuildfiles
be sure to use
--infer_universe_scope
only if its behavior is what you want.
Sky Query has some advantages and disadvantages compared to the default query. The main
disadvantage is that it cannot order its output according to graph order, and thus certain
output formats are forbidden. Its advantages are that it provides
two operators (allrdeps
and
rbuildfiles
) that are not available in the default query.
As well, Sky Query does its work by introspecting the
Skyframe graph, rather than creating a new
graph, which is what the default implementation does. Thus, there are some circumstances in which
it is faster and uses less memory.
Expressions: Syntax and semantics of the grammar
This is the grammar of the Bazel query language, expressed in EBNF notation:
expr ::= word
| let name = expr in expr
| (expr)
| expr intersect expr
| expr ^ expr
| expr union expr
| expr + expr
| expr except expr
| expr - expr
| set(word *)
| word '(' int | word | expr ... ')'
The following sections describe each of the productions of this grammar in order.
Target patterns
expr ::= word
Syntactically, a target pattern is just a word. It's interpreted as an
(unordered) set of targets. The simplest target pattern is a label, which
identifies a single target (file or rule). For example, the target pattern
//foo:bar
evaluates to a set containing one element, the target, the bar
rule.
Target patterns generalize labels to include wildcards over packages and
targets. For example, foo/...:all
(or just foo/...
) is a target pattern
that evaluates to a set containing all rules in every package recursively
beneath the foo
directory; bar/baz:all
is a target pattern that evaluates
to a set containing all the rules in the bar/baz
package, but not its
subpackages.
Similarly, foo/...:*
is a target pattern that evaluates to a set containing
all targets (rules and files) in every package recursively beneath the
foo
directory; bar/baz:*
evaluates to a set containing all the targets in
the bar/baz
package, but not its subpackages.
Because the :*
wildcard matches files as well as rules, it's often more
useful than :all
for queries. Conversely, the :all
wildcard (implicit in
target patterns like foo/...
) is typically more useful for builds.
bazel query
target patterns work the same as bazel build
build targets do.
For more details, see Target Patterns, or
type bazel help target-syntax
.
Target patterns may evaluate to a singleton set (in the case of a label), to a
set containing many elements (as in the case of foo/...
, which has thousands
of elements) or to the empty set, if the target pattern matches no targets.
All nodes in the result of a target pattern expression are correctly ordered
relative to each other according to the dependency relation. So, the result of
foo:*
is not just the set of targets in package foo
, it is also the
graph over those targets. (No guarantees are made about the relative ordering
of the result nodes against other nodes.) For more details, see the
graph order section.
Variables
expr ::= let name = expr1 in expr2
| $name
The Bazel query language allows definitions of and references to
variables. The result of evaluation of a let
expression is the same as
that of expr2, with all free occurrences
of variable name replaced by the value of
expr1.
For example, let v = foo/... in allpaths($v, //common) intersect $v
is
equivalent to the allpaths(foo/...,//common) intersect foo/...
.
An occurrence of a variable reference name
other than in
an enclosing let name = ...
expression is an
error. In other words, top-level query expressions cannot have free
variables.
In the above grammar productions, name
is like word, but with the
additional constraint that it be a legal identifier in the C programming
language. References to the variable must be prepended with the "$" character.
Each let
expression defines only a single variable, but you can nest them.
Both target patterns and variable references consist of just a single token, a word, creating a syntactic ambiguity. However, there is no semantic ambiguity, because the subset of words that are legal variable names is disjoint from the subset of words that are legal target patterns.
Technically speaking, let
expressions do not increase
the expressiveness of the query language: any query expressible in
the language can also be expressed without them. However, they
improve the conciseness of many queries, and may also lead to more
efficient query evaluation.
Parenthesized expressions
expr ::= (expr)
Parentheses associate subexpressions to force an order of evaluation. A parenthesized expression evaluates to the value of its argument.
Algebraic set operations: intersection, union, set difference
expr ::= expr intersect expr
| expr ^ expr
| expr union expr
| expr + expr
| expr except expr
| expr - expr
These three operators compute the usual set operations over their arguments.
Each operator has two forms, a nominal form, such as intersect
, and a
symbolic form, such as ^
. Both forms are equivalent; the symbolic forms are
quicker to type. (For clarity, the rest of this page uses the nominal forms.)
For example,
foo/... except foo/bar/...
evaluates to the set of targets that match foo/...
but not foo/bar/...
.
You can write the same query as:
foo/... - foo/bar/...
The intersect
(^
) and union
(+
) operations are commutative (symmetric);
except
(-
) is asymmetric. The parser treats all three operators as
left-associative and of equal precedence, so you might want parentheses. For
example, the first two of these expressions are equivalent, but the third is not:
x intersect y union z
(x intersect y) union z
x intersect (y union z)
Read targets from an external source: set
expr ::= set(word *)
The set(a b c ...)
operator computes the union of a set of zero or more
target patterns, separated by whitespace (no commas).
In conjunction with the Bourne shell's $(...)
feature, set()
provides a
means of saving the results of one query in a regular text file, manipulating
that text file using other programs (such as standard UNIX shell tools), and then
introducing the result back into the query tool as a value for further
processing. For example:
bazel query deps(//my:target) --output=label | grep ... | sed ... | awk ... > foo
bazel query "kind(cc_binary, set($(<foo)))"
In the next example,kind(cc_library, deps(//some_dir/foo:main, 5))
is
computed by filtering on the maxrank
values using an awk
program.
bazel query 'deps(//some_dir/foo:main)' --output maxrank | awk '($1 < 5) { print $2;} ' > foo
bazel query "kind(cc_library, set($(<foo)))"
In these examples, $(<foo)
is a shorthand for $(cat foo)
, but shell
commands other than cat
may be used too—such as the previous awk
command.
Functions
expr ::= word '(' int | word | expr ... ')'
The query language defines several functions. The name of the function determines the number and type of arguments it requires. The following functions are available:
allpaths
attr
buildfiles
rbuildfiles
deps
filter
kind
labels
loadfiles
rdeps
allrdeps
same_pkg_direct_rdeps
siblings
some
somepath
tests
visible
Transitive closure of dependencies: deps
expr ::= deps(expr)
| deps(expr, depth)
The deps(x)
operator evaluates to the graph formed
by the transitive closure of dependencies of its argument set
x. For example, the value of deps(//foo)
is the
dependency graph rooted at the single node foo
, including all its
dependencies. The value of deps(foo/...)
is the dependency graphs whose roots
are all rules in every package beneath the foo
directory. In this context,
'dependencies' means only rule and file targets, therefore the BUILD
and
Starlark files needed to create these targets are not included here. For that
you should use the buildfiles
operator.
The resulting graph is ordered according to the dependency relation. For more details, see the section on graph order.
The deps
operator accepts an optional second argument, which is an integer
literal specifying an upper bound on the depth of the search. So
deps(foo:*, 0)
returns all targets in the foo
package, while
deps(foo:*, 1)
further includes the direct prerequisites of any target in the
foo
package, and deps(foo:*, 2)
further includes the nodes directly
reachable from the nodes in deps(foo:*, 1)
, and so on. (These numbers
correspond to the ranks shown in the minrank
output format.)
If the depth parameter is omitted, the search is
unbounded: it computes the reflexive transitive closure of prerequisites.
Transitive closure of reverse dependencies: rdeps
expr ::= rdeps(expr, expr)
| rdeps(expr, expr, depth)
The rdeps(u, x)
operator evaluates to the reverse dependencies of the argument set
x within the transitive closure of the universe set
u.
The resulting graph is ordered according to the dependency relation. See the section on graph order for more details.
The rdeps
operator accepts an optional third argument, which is an integer
literal specifying an upper bound on the depth of the search. The resulting
graph only includes nodes within a distance of the specified depth from any
node in the argument set. So rdeps(//foo, //common, 1)
evaluates to all nodes
in the transitive closure of //foo
that directly depend on //common
. (These
numbers correspond to the ranks shown in the minrank
output
format.) If the depth parameter is omitted, the
search is unbounded.
Transitive closure of all reverse dependencies: allrdeps
expr ::= allrdeps(expr)
| allrdeps(expr, depth)
The allrdeps
operator behaves just like the rdeps
operator, except that the "universe set" is whatever the --universe_scope
flag
evaluated to, instead of being separately specified. Thus, if
--universe_scope=//foo/...
was passed, then allrdeps(//bar)
is
equivalent to rdeps(//foo/..., //bar)
.
Direct reverse dependencies in the same package: same_pkg_direct_rdeps
expr ::= same_pkg_direct_rdeps(expr)
The same_pkg_direct_rdeps(x)
operator evaluates to the full set of targets
that are in the same package as a target in the argument set, and which directly depend on it.
Dealing with a target's package: siblings
expr ::= siblings(expr)
The siblings(x)
operator evaluates to the full set of targets that are in
the same package as a target in the argument set.
Arbitrary choice: some
expr ::= some(expr)
| some(expr, count )
The some(x, k)
operator
selects at most k targets arbitrarily from its
argument set x, and evaluates to a set containing
only those targets. Parameter k is optional; if
missing, the result will be a singleton set containing only one target
arbitrarily selected. If the size of argument set x is
smaller than k, the whole argument set
x will be returned.
For example, the expression some(//foo:main union //bar:baz)
evaluates to a
singleton set containing either //foo:main
or //bar:baz
—though which
one is not defined. The expression some(//foo:main union //bar:baz, 2)
or
some(//foo:main union //bar:baz, 3)
returns both //foo:main
and
//bar:baz
.
If the argument is a singleton, then some
computes the identity function: some(//foo:main)
is
equivalent to //foo:main
.
It is an error if the specified argument set is empty, as in the
expression some(//foo:main intersect //bar:baz)
.
Path operators: somepath, allpaths
expr ::= somepath(expr, expr)
| allpaths(expr, expr)
The somepath(S, E)
and
allpaths(S, E)
operators compute
paths between two sets of targets. Both queries accept two
arguments, a set S of starting points and a set
E of ending points. somepath
returns the
graph of nodes on some arbitrary path from a target in
S to a target in E; allpaths
returns the graph of nodes on all paths from any target in
S to any target in E.
The resulting graphs are ordered according to the dependency relation. See the section on graph order for more details.
Target kind filtering: kind
expr ::= kind(word, expr)
The kind(pattern, input)
operator applies a filter to a set of targets, and discards those targets
that are not of the expected kind. The pattern
parameter specifies what kind of target to match.
For example, the kinds for the four targets defined by the BUILD
file
(for package p
) shown below are illustrated in the table:
Code | Target | Kind |
---|---|---|
genrule( name = "a", srcs = ["a.in"], outs = ["a.out"], cmd = "...", ) |
//p:a |
genrule rule |
//p:a.in |
source file | |
//p:a.out |
generated file | |
//p:BUILD |
source file |
Thus, kind("cc_.* rule", foo/...)
evaluates to the set
of all cc_library
, cc_binary
, etc,
rule targets beneath foo
, and kind("source file", deps(//foo))
evaluates to the set of all source files in the transitive closure
of dependencies of the //foo
target.
Quotation of the pattern argument is often required
because without it, many regular expressions, such as source
file
and .*_test
, are not considered words by the parser.
When matching for package group
, targets ending in
:all
may not yield any results. Use :all-targets
instead.
Target name filtering: filter
expr ::= filter(word, expr)
The filter(pattern, input)
operator applies a filter to a set of targets, and discards targets whose
labels (in absolute form) do not match the pattern; it
evaluates to a subset of its input.
The first argument, pattern is a word containing a
regular expression over target names. A filter
expression
evaluates to the set containing all targets x such that
x is a member of the set input and the
label (in absolute form, such as //foo:bar
)
of x contains an (unanchored) match
for the regular expression pattern. Since all
target names start with //
, it may be used as an alternative
to the ^
regular expression anchor.
This operator often provides a much faster and more robust alternative to the
intersect
operator. For example, in order to see all
bar
dependencies of the //foo:foo
target, one could
evaluate
deps(//foo) intersect //bar/...
This statement, however, will require parsing of all BUILD
files in the
bar
tree, which will be slow and prone to errors in
irrelevant BUILD
files. An alternative would be:
filter(//bar, deps(//foo))
which would first calculate the set of //foo
dependencies and
then would filter only targets matching the provided pattern—in other
words, targets with names containing //bar
as a substring.
Another common use of the filter(pattern,
expr)
operator is to filter specific files by their
name or extension. For example,
filter("\.cc$", deps(//foo))
will provide a list of all .cc
files used to build //foo
.
Rule attribute filtering: attr
expr ::= attr(word, word, expr)
The
attr(name, pattern, input)
operator applies a filter to a set of targets, and discards targets that aren't
rules, rule targets that do not have attribute name
defined or rule targets where the attribute value does not match the provided
regular expression pattern; it evaluates
to a subset of its input.
The first argument, name is the name of the rule
attribute that should be matched against the provided
regular expression pattern. The second argument,
pattern is a regular expression over the attribute
values. An attr
expression evaluates to the set containing all targets
x such that x is a
member of the set input, is a rule with the defined
attribute name and the attribute value contains an
(unanchored) match for the regular expression
pattern. If name is an
optional attribute and rule does not specify it explicitly then default
attribute value will be used for comparison. For example,
attr(linkshared, 0, deps(//foo))
will select all //foo
dependencies that are allowed to have a
linkshared attribute (such as, cc_binary
rule) and have it either
explicitly set to 0 or do not set it at all but default value is 0 (such as for
cc_binary
rules).
List-type attributes (such as srcs
, data
, etc) are
converted to strings of the form [value<sub>1</sub>, ..., value<sub>n</sub>]
,
starting with a [
bracket, ending with a ]
bracket
and using ",
" (comma, space) to delimit multiple values.
Labels are converted to strings by using the absolute form of the
label. For example, an attribute deps=[":foo",
"//otherpkg:bar", "wiz"]
would be converted to the
string [//thispkg:foo, //otherpkg:bar, //thispkg:wiz]
.
Brackets are always present, so the empty list would use string value []
for matching purposes. For example,
attr("srcs", "\[\]", deps(//foo))
will select all rules among //foo
dependencies that have an
empty srcs
attribute, while
attr("data", ".{3,}", deps(//foo))
will select all rules among //foo
dependencies that specify at
least one value in the data
attribute (every label is at least
3 characters long due to the //
and :
).
To select all rules among //foo
dependencies with a particular value
in a
list-type attribute, use
attr("tags", "[\[ ]value[,\]]", deps(//foo))
This works because the character before value
will be [
or a space and the
character after value
will be a comma or ]
.
Rule visibility filtering: visible
expr ::= visible(expr, expr)
The visible(predicate, input)
operator
applies a filter to a set of targets, and discards targets without the
required visibility.
The first argument, predicate, is a set of targets that all targets in the output must be visible to. A visible expression evaluates to the set containing all targets x such that x is a member of the set input, and for all targets y in predicate x is visible to y. For example:
visible(//foo, //bar:*)
will select all targets in the package //bar
that //foo
can depend on without violating visibility restrictions.
Evaluation of rule attributes of type label: labels
expr ::= labels(word, expr)
The labels(attr_name, inputs)
operator returns the set of targets specified in the
attribute attr_name of type "label" or "list of label" in
some rule in set inputs.
For example, labels(srcs, //foo)
returns the set of
targets appearing in the srcs
attribute of
the //foo
rule. If there are multiple rules
with srcs
attributes in the inputs set, the
union of their srcs
is returned.
Expand and filter test_suites: tests
expr ::= tests(expr)
The tests(x)
operator returns the set of all test
rules in set x, expanding any test_suite
rules into
the set of individual tests that they refer to, and applying filtering by
tag
and size
.
By default, query evaluation
ignores any non-test targets in all test_suite
rules. This can be
changed to errors with the --strict_test_suite
option.
For example, the query kind(test, foo:*)
lists all
the *_test
and test_suite
rules
in the foo
package. All the results are (by
definition) members of the foo
package. In contrast,
the query tests(foo:*)
will return all of the
individual tests that would be executed by bazel test
foo:*
: this may include tests belonging to other packages,
that are referenced directly or indirectly
via test_suite
rules.
Package definition files: buildfiles
expr ::= buildfiles(expr)
The buildfiles(x)
operator returns the set
of files that define the packages of each target in
set x; in other words, for each package, its BUILD
file,
plus any .bzl files it references via load
. Note that this
also returns the BUILD
files of the packages containing these
load
ed files.
This operator is typically used when determining what files or
packages are required to build a specified target, often in conjunction with
the --output package
option, below). For example,
bazel query 'buildfiles(deps(//foo))' --output package
returns the set of all packages on which //foo
transitively depends.
Package definition files: rbuildfiles
expr ::= rbuildfiles(word, ...)
The rbuildfiles
operator takes a comma-separated list of path fragments and returns
the set of BUILD
files that transitively depend on these path fragments. For instance, if
//foo
is a package, then rbuildfiles(foo/BUILD)
will return the
//foo:BUILD
target. If the foo/BUILD
file has
load('//bar:file.bzl'...
in it, then rbuildfiles(bar/file.bzl)
will
return the //foo:BUILD
target, as well as the targets for any other BUILD
files that
load //bar:file.bzl
The scope of the --universe_scope
flag. Files that do not correspond directly to BUILD
files and .bzl
files do not affect the results. For instance, source files (like foo.cc
) are ignored,
even if they are explicitly mentioned in the BUILD
file. Symlinks, however, are respected, so that
if foo/BUILD
is a symlink to bar/BUILD
, then
rbuildfiles(bar/BUILD)
will include //foo:BUILD
in its results.
The rbuildfiles
operator is almost morally the inverse of the
buildfiles
operator. However, this moral inversion
holds more strongly in one direction: the outputs of rbuildfiles
are just like the
inputs of buildfiles
; the former will only contain BUILD
file targets in packages,
and the latter may contain such targets. In the other direction, the correspondence is weaker. The
outputs of the buildfiles
operator are targets corresponding to all packages and .bzl
files needed by a given input. However, the inputs of the rbuildfiles
operator are
not those targets, but rather the path fragments that correspond to those targets.
Package definition files: loadfiles
expr ::= loadfiles(expr)
The loadfiles(x)
operator returns the set of
Starlark files that are needed to load the packages of each target in
set x. In other words, for each package, it returns the
.bzl files that are referenced from its BUILD
files.
Output formats
bazel query
generates a graph.
You specify the content, format, and ordering by which
bazel query
presents this graph
by means of the --output
command-line option.
When running with Sky Query, only output formats that are compatible with
unordered output are allowed. Specifically, graph
, minrank
, and
maxrank
output formats are forbidden.
Some of the output formats accept additional options. The name of
each output option is prefixed with the output format to which it
applies, so --graph:factored
applies only
when --output=graph
is being used; it has no effect if
an output format other than graph
is used. Similarly,
--xml:line_numbers
applies only when --output=xml
is being used.
On the ordering of results
Although query expressions always follow the "law of
conservation of graph order", presenting the results may be done
in either a dependency-ordered or unordered manner. This does not
influence the targets in the result set or how the query is computed. It only
affects how the results are printed to stdout. Moreover, nodes that are
equivalent in the dependency order may or may not be ordered alphabetically.
The --order_output
flag can be used to control this behavior.
(The --[no]order_results
flag has a subset of the functionality
of the --order_output
flag and is deprecated.)
The default value of this flag is auto
, which prints results in lexicographical
order. However, when somepath(a,b)
is used, the results will be printed in
deps
order instead.
When this flag is no
and --output
is one of
build
, label
, label_kind
, location
, package
, proto
, or
xml
, the outputs will be printed in arbitrary order. This is
generally the fastest option. It is not supported though when
--output
is one of graph
, minrank
or
maxrank
: with these formats, Bazel always prints results
ordered by the dependency order or rank.
When this flag is deps
, Bazel prints results in some topological order—that is,
dependencies first. However, nodes that are unordered by the dependency order
(because there is no path from either one to the other) may be printed in any order.
When this flag is full
, Bazel prints nodes in a fully deterministic (total) order.
First, all nodes are sorted alphabetically. Then, each node in the list is used as the start of a
post-order depth-first search in which outgoing edges to unvisited nodes are traversed in
alphabetical order of the successor nodes. Finally, nodes are printed in the reverse of the order
in which they were visited.
Printing nodes in this order may be slower, so it should be used only when determinism is important.
Print the source form of targets as they would appear in BUILD
--output build
With this option, the representation of each target is as if it were
hand-written in the BUILD language. All variables and function calls
(such as glob, macros) are expanded, which is useful for seeing the effect
of Starlark macros. Additionally, each effective rule reports a
generator_name
and/or generator_function
) value,
giving the name of the macro that was evaluated to produce the effective rule.
Although the output uses the same syntax as BUILD
files, it is not
guaranteed to produce a valid BUILD
file.
Print the label of each target
--output label
With this option, the set of names (or labels) of each target
in the resulting graph is printed, one label per line, in
topological order (unless --noorder_results
is specified, see
notes on the ordering of results).
(A topological ordering is one in which a graph
node appears earlier than all of its successors.) Of course there
are many possible topological orderings of a graph (reverse
postorder is just one); which one is chosen is not specified.
When printing the output of a somepath
query, the order
in which the nodes are printed is the order of the path.
Caveat: in some corner cases, there may be two distinct targets with
the same label; for example, a sh_binary
rule and its
sole (implicit) srcs
file may both be called
foo.sh
. If the result of a query contains both of
these targets, the output (in label
format) will appear
to contain a duplicate. When using the label_kind
(see
below) format, the distinction becomes clear: the two targets have
the same name, but one has kind sh_binary rule
and the
other kind source file
.
Print the label and kind of each target
--output label_kind
Like label
, this output format prints the labels of
each target in the resulting graph, in topological order, but it
additionally precedes the label by the kind of the target.
Print targets in protocol buffer format
--output proto
Prints the query output as a
QueryResult
protocol buffer.
Print targets in length-delimited protocol buffer format
--output streamed_proto
Prints a
length-delimited
stream of
Target
protocol buffers. This is useful to (i) get around
size limitations
of protocol buffers when there are too many targets to fit in a single
QueryResult
or (ii) to start processing while Bazel is still outputting.
Print targets in text proto format
--output textproto
Similar to --output proto
, prints the
QueryResult
protocol buffer but in
text format.
Print targets in ndjson format
--output streamed_jsonproto
Similar to --output streamed_proto
, prints a stream of
Target
protocol buffers but in ndjson format.
Print the label of each target, in rank order
--output minrank --output maxrank
Like label
, the minrank
and maxrank
output formats print the labels of each
target in the resulting graph, but instead of appearing in
topological order, they appear in rank order, preceded by their
rank number. These are unaffected by the result ordering
--[no]order_results
flag (see notes on
the ordering of results).
There are two variants of this format: minrank
ranks
each node by the length of the shortest path from a root node to it.
"Root" nodes (those which have no incoming edges) are of rank 0,
their successors are of rank 1, etc. (As always, edges point from a
target to its prerequisites: the targets it depends upon.)
maxrank
ranks each node by the length of the longest
path from a root node to it. Again, "roots" have rank 0, all other
nodes have a rank which is one greater than the maximum rank of all
their predecessors.
All nodes in a cycle are considered of equal rank. (Most graphs are
acyclic, but cycles do occur
simply because BUILD
files contain erroneous cycles.)
These output formats are useful for discovering how deep a graph is.
If used for the result of a deps(x)
, rdeps(x)
,
or allpaths
query, then the rank number is equal to the
length of the shortest (with minrank
) or longest
(with maxrank
) path from x
to a node in
that rank. maxrank
can be used to determine the
longest sequence of build steps required to build a target.
For example, the graph on the left yields the outputs on the right
when --output minrank
and --output maxrank
are specified, respectively.
minrank 0 //c:c 1 //b:b 1 //a:a 2 //b:b.cc 2 //a:a.cc |
maxrank 0 //c:c 1 //b:b 2 //a:a 2 //b:b.cc 3 //a:a.cc |
Print the location of each target
--output location
Like label_kind
, this option prints out, for each
target in the result, the target's kind and label, but it is
prefixed by a string describing the location of that target, as a
filename and line number. The format resembles the output of
grep
. Thus, tools that can parse the latter (such as Emacs
or vi) can also use the query output to step through a series of
matches, allowing the Bazel query tool to be used as a
dependency-graph-aware "grep for BUILD files".
The location information varies by target kind (see the kind operator). For rules, the
location of the rule's declaration within the BUILD
file is printed.
For source files, the location of line 1 of the actual file is
printed. For a generated file, the location of the rule that
generates it is printed. (The query tool does not have sufficient
information to find the actual location of the generated file, and
in any case, it might not exist if a build has not yet been performed.)
Print the set of packages
--output package
This option prints the name of all packages to which some target in the result set belongs. The names are printed in lexicographical order; duplicates are excluded. Formally, this is a projection from the set of labels (package, target) onto packages.
Packages in external repositories are formatted as
@repo//foo/bar
while packages in the main repository are
formatted as foo/bar
.
In conjunction with the deps(...)
query, this output
option can be used to find the set of packages that must be checked
out in order to build a given set of targets.
Display a graph of the result
--output graph
This option causes the query result to be printed as a directed
graph in the popular AT&T GraphViz format. Typically the
result is saved to a file, such as .png
or .svg
.
(If the dot
program is not installed on your workstation, you
can install it using the command sudo apt-get install graphviz
.)
See the example section below for a sample invocation.
This output format is particularly useful for allpaths
,
deps
, or rdeps
queries, where the result
includes a set of paths that cannot be easily visualized when
rendered in a linear form, such as with --output label
.
By default, the graph is rendered in a factored form. That is,
topologically-equivalent nodes are merged together into a single
node with multiple labels. This makes the graph more compact
and readable, because typical result graphs contain highly
repetitive patterns. For example, a java_library
rule
may depend on hundreds of Java source files all generated by the
same genrule
; in the factored graph, all these files
are represented by a single node. This behavior may be disabled
with the --nograph:factored
option.
--graph:node_limit n
The option specifies the maximum length of the label string for a
graph node in the output. Longer labels will be truncated; -1
disables truncation. Due to the factored form in which graphs are
usually printed, the node labels may be very long. GraphViz cannot
handle labels exceeding 1024 characters, which is the default value
of this option. This option has no effect unless
--output=graph
is being used.
--[no]graph:factored
By default, graphs are displayed in factored form, as explained
above.
When --nograph:factored
is specified, graphs are
printed without factoring. This makes visualization using GraphViz
impractical, but the simpler format may ease processing by other
tools (such as grep). This option has no effect
unless --output=graph
is being used.
XML
--output xml
This option causes the resulting targets to be printed in an XML form. The output starts with an XML header such as this
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<query version="2">
and then continues with an XML element for each target in the result graph, in topological order (unless unordered results are requested), and then finishes with a terminating
</query>
Simple entries are emitted for targets of file
kind:
<source-file name='//foo:foo_main.cc' .../>
<generated-file name='//foo:libfoo.so' .../>
But for rules, the XML is structured and contains definitions of all
the attributes of the rule, including those whose value was not
explicitly specified in the rule's BUILD
file.
Additionally, the result includes rule-input
and
rule-output
elements so that the topology of the
dependency graph can be reconstructed without having to know that,
for example, the elements of the srcs
attribute are
forward dependencies (prerequisites) and the contents of the
outs
attribute are backward dependencies (consumers).
rule-input
elements for implicit dependencies are suppressed if
--noimplicit_deps
is specified.
<rule class='cc_binary rule' name='//foo:foo' ...>
<list name='srcs'>
<label value='//foo:foo_main.cc'/>
<label value='//foo:bar.cc'/>
...
</list>
<list name='deps'>
<label value='//common:common'/>
<label value='//collections:collections'/>
...
</list>
<list name='data'>
...
</list>
<int name='linkstatic' value='0'/>
<int name='linkshared' value='0'/>
<list name='licenses'/>
<list name='distribs'>
<distribution value="INTERNAL" />
</list>
<rule-input name="//common:common" />
<rule-input name="//collections:collections" />
<rule-input name="//foo:foo_main.cc" />
<rule-input name="//foo:bar.cc" />
...
</rule>
Every XML element for a target contains a name
attribute, whose value is the target's label, and
a location
attribute, whose value is the target's
location as printed by the --output location
.
--[no]xml:line_numbers
By default, the locations displayed in the XML output contain line numbers.
When --noxml:line_numbers
is specified, line numbers are not printed.
--[no]xml:default_values
By default, XML output does not include rule attribute whose value
is the default value for that kind of attribute (for example, if it
were not specified in the BUILD
file, or the default value was
provided explicitly). This option causes such attribute values to
be included in the XML output.
Regular expressions
Regular expressions in the query language use the Java regex library, so you can use the
full syntax for
java.util.regex.Pattern
.
Querying with external repositories
If the build depends on rules from external repositories
then query results will include these dependencies. For
example, if //foo:bar
depends on @other-repo//baz:lib
, then
bazel query 'deps(//foo:bar)'
will list @other-repo//baz:lib
as a
dependency.