The Bazel community maintains this repository. Neither Google nor the Bazel team provides support for the code. However, this repository is part of the test suite used to vet new Bazel releases. See the project:#contributing page for information on our development workflow.
In general, only the latest version is supported. Backporting changes is done on a best effort basis based on severity, risk of regressions, and the willingness of volunteers.
If you want or need particular functionality backported, then the best way is to open a PR to demonstrate the feasibility of the backport.
The supported Bazel versions are:
For (2) and (3) above, only the latest minor/patch version of the major release is officially supported. Earlier minor/patch versions are supported on a best-effort basis only. We increase the minimum minor/patch version as necessary to fix bugs or introduce functionality relying on features introduced in later minor/patch versions.
See Bazel's release support matrix for what versions are the rolling, active, and prior releases.
We only support the platforms that our continuous integration jobs run, which is Linux, Mac, and Windows. Code to support other platforms is allowed, but can only be on a best-effort basis.
We generally follow the Bazel Rule Compatibility guidelines, which provides a path from an arbitrary release to the latest release in an incremental fashion.
Breaking changes are allowed, but follow a process to introduce them over a series of releases to so users can still incrementally upgrade. See the Breaking Changes doc for the process.
An experimental features is functionality that may not be ready for general use and may change quickly and/or significantly. Such features are denoted in their name or API docs as “experimental”. They may have breaking changes made at any time.
If you like or use an experimental feature, then file issues to request it be taken out of experimental. Often times these features are experimental because we need feedback or experience to verify they are working, useful, and worth the effort of supporting.