How to bootstrap bazel

[theoparis]

I installed openjdk23-jdk and bash and extracted https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/download/7.4.0rc1/bazel-7.4.0rc1-dist.zip. It fails both on alpine linux and a glibc host system... I also tried bazel 8.0.0rc1.

The command I used to build bazel:
env EXTRA_BAZEL_ARGS="--tool_java_runtime_version=local_jdk" bash ./compile.sh

Some of the errors I received:

rc/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/actions/CachingActionEvent.java:26: error: cannot find symbol
    return new AutoValue_CachingActionEvent(
               ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_CachingActionEvent
  location: class CachingActionEvent
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/actions/ChangedFilesMessage.java:51: error: cannot find symbol
    return new AutoValue_ChangedFilesMessage(
               ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_ChangedFilesMessage
  location: class ChangedFilesMessage
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/actions/FilesetTraversalParams.java:154: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParams_DirectTraversalRoot(
                 ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParams_DirectTraversalRoot
  location: class DirectTraversalRoot
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/actions/FilesetTraversalParams.java:255: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParams_DirectTraversal(
                 ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParams_DirectTraversal
  location: class DirectTraversal
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/actions/FilesetTraversalParamsFactory.java:195: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParamsFactory_DirectoryTraversalParams(
                 ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParamsFactory_DirectoryTraversalParams
  location: class DirectoryTraversalParams
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/actions/FilesetTraversalParamsFactory.java:232: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParamsFactory_NestedTraversalParams(
                 ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_FilesetTraversalParamsFactory_NestedTraversalParams
  location: class NestedTraversalParams
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/sandbox/SandboxHelpers.java:621: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_SandboxHelpers_SandboxOutputs(files, dirs);
                 ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_SandboxHelpers_SandboxOutputs
  location: class SandboxOutputs
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/sandbox/SandboxHelpers.java:626: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_SandboxHelpers_SandboxOutputs(
                 ^
  symbol:   class AutoValue_SandboxHelpers_SandboxOutputs
  location: class SandboxOutputs
src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/skyframe/ActionOutputMetadataStore.java:629: error: cannot find symbol
      return new AutoValue_ActionOutputMetadataStore_FileArtifactStatAndValue(
                 ^

Additionally theres a warning at the top of the build log:

warning: [options] location of system modules is not set in conjunction with -source 21
  not setting the location of system modules may lead to class files that cannot run on JDK 21
    --release 21 is recommended instead of -source 21 -target 21 because it sets the location of system modules automatically

Is there a way to make it use --release if that is the cause of this issue?

[shayanhoshyari]

The standard way to bootstrap bazel is bazelisk: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk; it is a lightweight binary that downloads the right version of bazel (depending on what you put In the config for your project) and runs that. Instead of calling bazel, the norm is to just call bazelisk for the operations.

[theoparis]

I followed this because not every system is able to run a prebuilt bazel binary. However, running compile.sh seems to always give over 100 errors relating to AutoValue types and I'm not sure why.