Rust is a popular programming language due to its speed, safety, and memory efficiency. However, it can be challenging to scale Rust builds, especially for large projects with many dependencies.
Bazel is a build system that can help you scale your Rust builds. It is a powerful tool with many features, including:
Parallelism: Bazel can build your code in parallel, which can significantly speed up your builds. Caching: Bazel caches the results of previous builds, so it only needs to rebuild the parts of your code that have changed. Remote execution: Bazel can execute your builds on remote machines, which can free up your local machine for other tasks. Reproducibility: Bazel builds are reproducible, which means that you can be confident that your builds will produce the same results every time.
Prerequisites
Bazel installed on your machine Rust installed on your machine
Setting up Bazel
The first step is to set up Bazel. You can install Bazel from the Bazel website.
Once you have installed Bazel, you need to create a .bazelrc file in the root directory of your project. This file will contain configuration settings for Bazel.
Here is an example of a .bazelrc file:
build --remote_executor=remotebuildexec.googleapis.com
build --remote_cache=remotebuildexec.googleapis.com
The se settings configure Bazel to use the remote build execution and cache services provided by Google Cloud Build.
Writing Bazel rules Once you have set up Bazel, you need to write Bazel rules for your Rust project. Bazel rules are files that tell Bazel how to build your code.
Here is an example of a Bazel rule for a Rust library:
rust_library(
name = "my_library",
srcs = ["src/lib.rs"],
deps = ["@rustdeps//:rustc"],
)
This rule tells Bazel to build a Rust library named my_library. The srcs attribute specifies the source files for the library. The deps attribute specifies the dependencies of the library.
Building your project Once you have written Bazel rules for your project, you can build your project with Bazel. To do this, run the following command:
bazel build //...
This command will build all of the targets in your project.
Scaling your builds Bazel can help you scale your Rust builds in a number of ways.
First, Bazel can build your code in parallel. This means that Bazel can start building multiple targets at the same time, which can significantly speed up your builds.
Second, Bazel caches the results of previous builds. This means that Bazel only needs to rebuild the parts of your code that have changed. This can save a lot of time, especially if your project has many dependencies.
Third, Bazel can execute your builds on remote machines. This means that you can free up your local machine for other tasks.
To scale your builds, you can use the following Bazel flags:
-c=opt: This flag tells Bazel to build your code in optimized mode. This can make your builds smaller and faster.
-j=N: This flag tells Bazel to build your code with N jobs. This can speed up your builds if you have a multi-core machine.
-remote_executor=remotebuildexec.googleapis.com: This flag tells Bazel to execute your builds on remote machines.
Conclusion Bazel is a powerful build system that can help you scale your Rust builds. By using Bazel, you can build your code in parallel, cache the results of previous builds, and execute your builds on remote machines.