installing bazel

An easy way to install in Linux (for example) is to use the standalone installer (available starting with version 5.0.0). For example, on x86_64 Linux:

$ wget https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/download/5.1.0/bazel-5.1.0-installer-linux-x86_64.sh
$ chmod +x bazel-5.1.0-installer-linux-x86_64.sh 

Full installation details are on bazel.build.

local user install

Run the installer in user mode

$ ./bazel-5.1.0-installer-linux-x86_64.sh --user

Make sure you have $HOME/bin in your path, for example by adding the following to $HOME/.bashrc

$ echo 'export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH' >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ source $HOME/.bashrc

To enable bash completion

$ echo 'source $HOME/.bazel/bin/bazel-complete.bash' >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ source $HOME/.bashrc

global install

Run the installer in root mode

$ sudo ./bazel-5.1.0-installer-linux-x86_64.sh

The bazel executable will be installed in /usr/local/bin.

bazelrc

Optionally, can set up some debugging defaults in .bazelrc, for example:

# --compilation_mode=<fastbuild, dbg or opt> [-c] default: "fastbuild"
build --compilation_mode=dbg
 
# --[no]subcommands [-s] (true, pretty_print or false; default: "false")
build --subcommands=true
 
# --[no]verbose_failures (a boolean; default: "false")
build --verbose_failures