rules_playdate

Bazel rules for building and running Playdate applications in Swift and C.

Caution

This is all very much a work in progress. Things will break and change over time but it'll be fun.

Documentation

See the examples directory for the latest tested examples on using the rules.

Requirements

Bazel release	Min. rules version	Final rules version
7.0.0	current	current

	macOS	Linux	Windows
Supported platform	✅	❌	❌

	Swift	C	Lua
Supported language	✅	✅	❌

Getting started

rules_playdate provides a set of Bazel rules and toolchains for building Playdate applications.

1. Download the Playdate SDK. You can download the SDK from the play.date/dev site.

2. Depend on the required rules to build your Playdate application, the following example uses macOS as the development platform. See the release notes for a snippet on adding rules_playdate as a dependency.

3. Create the targets in a BUILD.bazel:

   load("@rules_apple//apple:macos.bzl", "macos_dylib")
   load("@rules_playdate//playdate:playdate.bzl", "playdate_application")
   load("@rules_swift//swift:swift.bzl", "swift_library")
   
   # Define a Swift library which contains your application's code.
   swift_library(
       name = "MyApp.swift_lib",
       srcs = ["MyApp.swift"],
       deps = [ ... ],
   )
   
   # Define a dylib target to package the `swift_library` as a dynamic library.
   macos_dylib(
       name = "MyApp_macos_lib",
       deps = [":MyApp.swift_lib"],
       minimum_os_version = "14.0",
   )
   
   # Define a Playdate application
   playdate_application(
       name = "MyApp",
       library = ":MyApp_macos_lib",
   )

4. You can build the Playdate application:

   bazel build //path/to:MyApp

5. You can run the Playdate application in the Playdate Simulator:

   bazel run //path/to:MyApp

Playdate C and Swift API

This project is mostly focused on providing build rules for the Playdate and not any additional APIs around the SDK. However, there are some simple Swift and C libraries which wrap the Playdate SDK API to make it easier to get started. You may use these libraries or use the Playdate SDK directly.

See the @rules_playdate//playdate/lib targets for more information. For any information on the Playdate SDK, please refer to the Playdate SDK documentation.

Swift

Swift playdate support is pretty experimental as building with Swift for embedded platforms is not supported in any official release yet. You will need to use a development version of the Swift toolchain that supports building for embedded platforms. The best starting point to learn more are the examples here and the Byte-sized Swift: Building Tiny Games for the Playdate blog post.

load("@rules_swift//swift:swift.bzl", "swift_library")

swift_library(
    name = "MyApp.swift_lib",
    srcs = ["MyApp.swift"],
    deps = ["@rules_playdate//playdate/lib/swift:playdate"],
)

import Playdate

let displayAPI = playdateAPI.display.unsafelyUnwrapped.pointee

C

For C libraries, you may use the C API directly from the Playdate SDK. It is defined as a cc_library target via the playdate_sdk module extension.

load("@rules_cc//cc:defs.bzl", "cc_library")

cc_library(
    name = "MyApp.c_lib",
    srcs = ["MyApp.c"],
    deps = ["@playdate_sdk//:pd_api"],

    # You may also use a thin wrapper around the C API with:
    # deps = ["@rules_playdate//playdate/lib/c:playdate"],
)

// in MyApp.h

#include "pd_api.h"
// or #include "cplaydate.h" if using the wrapper