Combine "maven_jar" and "java_import". Allow maven to work outside of WORKSPACE.

[michaelsafyan]

Right now, one can import maven artifacts via maven_jar. However, it only works within the WORKSPACE file. This is problematic for organization, especially if many such jars are listed. For example, if I want these artifacts to be organized in a third-party directory structure, like:

   third_party/google/guava
   third_party/google/dagger2
   third_party/google/gae
   third_party/apache/log4j
   ...

... the restriction on listing these all in WORKSPACE becomes problematic. On top of that, it seems that maven_jar seems to serve much the same purpose as java_import, except that java_import looks for the JAR file locally. Consider merging these into a single rule (where one can specify either "jars" for local jar files or "maven_artifact" for downloading from maven).

[davidzchen]

FWIW, java_import looks for a JAR file that is within the workspace. A hypothetical local_jar rule that searches for JARs outside the workspace would still be a repository rule since it is non-hermetic and would, under the current convention, be restricted to the WORKSPACE file.

In order to combine maven_jar with java_import, we would need to decide whether we should allow non-hermetic repository rules to be intermixed with conventional build rules in BUILD files.

[michaelsafyan]

At the very least, allow non-hermetic rules under "third_party" (or some
whitelist of directories specified on the command line), please. Without
that, WORKSPACE files can become unacceptably large and disorganized.

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 18:02 David Z. Chen [email protected] wrote:

FWIW, java_import looks for a JAR file that is within the workspace. A
hypothetical local_jar rule that searches for JARs outside the workspace
would still be a repository rule since it is non-hermetic and would, under
the current convention, be restricted to the WORKSPACE file.

In order to combine maven_jar with java_import, we would need to decide
whether we should allow non-hermetic repository rules to be intermixed with
conventional build rules in BUILD files.

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[kchodorow]

You can use load() statements from WORKSPACE files, to keep them shorter and more readable.

[zhexuany]

@kchodorow Any updates about this particular issue?

[kchodorow]

What in particular are you looking for? You can currently use load statements and we are working on allowing recursive workspaces (#1943).