Release 8.6.0rc3 (2026-02-24)

Configurability

• Reporting of cached test results can now be suppressed with `--test_summary=short_uncached` or `--test_summary=detailed_uncached`. (#28343)
• `ctx.actions.symlink` now accepts a `target_type` argument. (#28538)

External Dependencies

• Bazel's remote repository downloader now fails over immediately to mirror URLs if a TLS handshake error occurs. (#28459)
• The `compatibility_level` and `max_compatibility_level` attributes of `module` in MODULE.bazel are now no-ops. Module maintainers should stop specifying those attributes and provide clear build time error messages and actionable migration paths when making major breaking changes. (#28615)
• bazel mod show_repo now has two new flags: --all_repos to show all defined repos; and --all_visible_repos to show all repos visible to the base module (--base_module, defaults to the root module), along with their apparent names. (#28012)
• Made overlaid files executable in http_archive. This makes it possible to use registry overlays to add shell scripts. (#28277)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Alex Novak, ashutosh0x, Christian Scott, David Ostrovsky, Fabian Meumertzheim, George Gensure, Jordan, Paul Tarjan, Régis Desgroppes, Timothy Gu, and Tyler French.

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