Release 8.1.0rc4 (2025-02-11)

Bazel 8.1.0 is a minor LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 8.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

General

• On Linux, the default limit on the number of --watchfs file events per directory has been raised to 10,000 (from 500). If needed, it can be increased further via --host_jvm_args=-Djdk.nio.file.WatchService.maxEventsPerPoll=<limit>. (#24872)

C++ / Objective-C

• Added conlyopts and cxxopts to objc_library. (#25022)

Configurability

• Changing any part of --run_under that isn't the label (such as the shell command) no longer invalidates the analysis cache. (#25023)
• The new no_match_error attribute on toolchain_type can be used to show a custom message when no matching toolchain is found for that type, but one is required. (#25178)

External Dependencies

• --experimental_downloader_config now supports the ~ character for the home directory. (#24978)
• Added repository_ctx.original_name, which contains the original value of the name attribute as specified at the repo rule call site. (#25191)

Remote Execution

• CAS requests made when Bazel downloads a blob with Build without the Bytes enabled now provide metadata with an action ID of input if the blob is downloaded as the input to a local action and output if it is a requested action output. (#25058)

Starlark / Build Language

• Add a set data type to Starlark. (#25111)

Refer to the full list of commits for more details.

Acknowledgements:

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, Keith Smiley, Kiron, Pareesh Madan, and sarad.

Notice: Bazel installers contain binaries licensed under the GPLv2 with Classpath exception. Those installers should always be redistributed along with the source code.

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