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Building UwU-C with Bazel

This project uses Bazel as its build system. Bazel provides fast, reproducible builds with excellent caching and incremental compilation.

Prerequisites

Install Bazel (or Bazelisk, which automatically uses the correct Bazel version):

macOS:

brew install bazelisk

Linux:

npm install -g @bazel/bazelisk

Or download from bazel.build/install

Basic Commands

Build the Compiler

Build the UwUC compiler in release mode (optimized):

bazel build //:uwucc

The compiled binary will be available at bazel-bin/uwucc.

Build in Debug Mode

Build with debug symbols and address sanitizer:

bazel build --config=debug //:uwucc

Run the Compiler

Run the compiler directly through Bazel:

bazel run //:uwucc -- input.uwu -o output

Or use the built binary:

./bazel-bin/uwucc input.uwu -o output

Compiling Examples

The build system automatically creates targets for all .uwu files in the example/ directory.

Build an Example

For a file example/ez.uwu:

bazel build //:example_ez

The compiled binary will be at bazel-bin/ez.

Run an Example

bazel run //:example_ez

List All Available Targets

See all example targets and other build targets:

bazel query //...

Build Configurations

Release Build (default)

Optimized with -O2 and -march=native:

bazel build //:uwucc
# or explicitly:
bazel build --config=release //:uwucc

Debug Build

With debug symbols, no optimization, and AddressSanitizer:

bazel build --config=debug //:uwucc

Platform Support

The build system automatically detects your platform and architecture:

  • Platforms: macOS, Linux
  • Architectures: x86_64, ARM64 (aarch64)

Platform-specific flags are applied automatically:

  • macOS: -DUWUCC_PLATFORM_MACOS
  • Linux: -DUWUCC_PLATFORM_LINUX, -no-pie linker flag
  • ARM64: -DUWUCC_ARCH_ARM64
  • x86_64: -DUWUCC_ARCH_X86_64

Cleaning Build Artifacts

Remove all build outputs:

bazel clean

Deep clean (removes all cached data):

bazel clean --expunge

Getting Build Information

View build configuration and paths:

bazel info

Advantages Over Make

  • Incremental builds: Only rebuilds what changed
  • Better caching: Shares build cache across projects
  • Reproducible: Same inputs always produce same outputs
  • Parallel by default: Uses all CPU cores efficiently
  • Cross-platform: Consistent behavior on all platforms

Configuration Files

  • MODULE.bazel - Declares dependencies (platforms, bazel_skylib)
  • BUILD.bazel - Defines build targets and rules
  • .bazelrc - Build configuration options and flags

Common Issues

"No such target": Make sure you're in the project root directory.

"Platform not found": Update the platforms version in MODULE.bazel.

Slow first build: Bazel downloads dependencies and builds everything on first run. Subsequent builds are much faster.

Additional Resources