iOS Rules for Bazel

⚠️ This is alpha software. We are developing these rules in the open so you should only use them if you know what you are doing and are willing to help develop them.

These rules provide some macros and rules that make it easier to build iOS application with Bazel. The heavy lifting of compiling, and packaging is still done by the existing objc_library rule in Bazel, and by the swift_library rule available from rules_swift.

Bazel version required by current rules is here

Xcode 12 and above supported, to find the last SHA with support for older versions see the list of git tags.

Reference documentation

Click here for the documentation.

Quick setup

Add the following lines to your WORKSPACE file. Note that since rules_swift and rules_apple no longer create releases, the versions are hardcoded to commit sha's that are known to work. You can see the particular commit sha's in repositories.bzl.

load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:git.bzl", "git_repository")

git_repository(
    name = "build_bazel_rules_ios",
    remote = "https://github.com/bazel-ios/rules_ios.git",
    branch = "master",
)

load(
    "@build_bazel_rules_ios//rules:repositories.bzl",
    "rules_ios_dependencies"
)

rules_ios_dependencies()

load(
    "@build_bazel_rules_apple//apple:repositories.bzl",
    "apple_rules_dependencies",
)

apple_rules_dependencies()

load(
    "@build_bazel_rules_swift//swift:repositories.bzl",
    "swift_rules_dependencies",
)

swift_rules_dependencies()

load(
    "@build_bazel_apple_support//lib:repositories.bzl",
    "apple_support_dependencies",
)

apple_support_dependencies()

load(
    "@com_google_protobuf//:protobuf_deps.bzl",
    "protobuf_deps",
)

protobuf_deps()

Examples

Minimal example:

load("@build_bazel_rules_ios//rules:app.bzl", "ios_application")

ios_application(
    name = "iOS-App",
    srcs = glob(["*.m"]),
    bundle_id = "com.example.ios-app",
    entitlements = "ios.entitlements",
    families = [
        "iphone",
        "ipad",
    ],
    launch_storyboard = "LaunchScreen.storyboard",
    minimum_os_version = "12.0",
    visibility = ["//visibility:public"],
)

See the tests directory for sample applications.

Special notes about debugging xcode projects

Debugging does not work in sandbox mode, due to issue #108. The workaround for now is to disable sandboxing in the .bazelrc file.