The following release notes are still in the process of being updated and cleaned up.

Release 8.8.0rc1 (2026-08-06)

Bazel 8.8.0 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.

Configurability

• The and_then method on transitions can be used to compose transitions. Both Starlark transitions and native transitions (e.g. config.exec()) are supported. (#30330)

Core

• Fix and consolidate repo env handling (#29069)
• Action rewinding (--rewind_lost_inputs) can now succeed even if the remote cache doesn't verify that AC entries aren't stale. (#30398)

External Dependencies

• Fixes an error when using strip_components with archives containing symbolic//hard links. (#30463)
• Make naming scheme for repo contents cache entries more reliable (#29073)
• module_extension(...) now accepts a facts_version integer parameter. Bumping it invalidates the facts persisted in MODULE.bazel.lock for that extension, allowing extension authors to make breaking changes to the facts schema without risking misinterpretation by older code paths. (#29992)
• Fixed spurious "No such file" errors with the remote repo contents cache when a repo contains a symlink to a .bzl file. (#30101)
• Fixed a crash with --experimental_remote_repo_contents_cache when running without a remote or disk cache. (#30076)
• Running bazel shutdown no longer results in stale lockfile data being written. (#30397)

OSS

• Fixed Bazel being unable to run a Windows executable whose path is too long to shorten under MAX_PATH. (#30021)

Remote Execution

• The results of reproducible repository rules without dependencies added at runtime (e.g., via repository_ctx.watch or .getenv) can now be cached in a regular HTTP or gRPC remote cache if the new --experimental_remote_repo_contents_cache startup option is provided. (#29075)
• Prefetch .bzl files in the remote repo contents cache. (#29082)
• Fix repo contents cache FileValue staleness (#29084)
• Fix remote repo content caching for non-gRPC backends (#30029)
• Support bounded parallel chunk transfers (#29873)
• Enable TCP keepalive by default for gRPC connections with reasonable defaults (#30157)
• Fixed an issue that caused Bazel to fail on a lost input even with build or action rewinding enabled. (#29928)
• Fixed spurious "No such file" errors with the remote repo contents cache when a repo contains a symlink to a .bzl file. (#30101)

Starlark / Build Language

• Bazel now parses and ignores the Starlark type annotation syntax introduced by newer Bazel versions (gated by --experimental_starlark_type_syntax, enabled by default). (#30373)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Armando Montanez, Ashutosh Kumar Singh, Bryce Lampe, Eaugene Thomas, Fabian Meumertzheim, Jasmine Tang, John Cater, Keith Smiley, Régis Desgroppes, Richard Lavoie, Son Luong Ngoc, Vadim Berezniker, and Will Stranton.

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