Release 8.7.0rc2 (2026-05-04)

Bazel 8.7.0 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

• Fix launcher/launcher_maker for cross build, e.g. build windows binary on linux machine. (#29240)

External Dependencies

• package_group now supports labels with external repositories in the packages attribute (#28896).
• Added SOCKS proxy support. Bazel now accepts socks://, socks4://, and socks5:// URLs in HTTPS_PROXY/HTTP_PROXY environment variables and related system properties. (#29305)
• Adds the strip_components attribute to extract/download_and_extract/http_archive to allow stripping of path components when extracting files. (#29367)

Remote Execution

• Bazel now has experimental support for --rewind_lost_inputs, which can rerun actions within a single build to recover from (remote or disk) cache evictions. (#28971)
• Added --experimental_remote_cache_chunking flag to read and write large blobs to/from the remote cache in chunks. Requires server support. (#28900)

Starlark / Build Language

• string.splitlines() no longer treat u+0085 as a newline character when internal_starlark_utf_8_byte_strings is set (which defaults to true) (#28932)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, H5-O5, Jacob Nowjack, Justin Won, Keith Smiley, Mike Lundy, Sarad Pant, and Will Stranton.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 8.7.0rc1 (2026-04-27)

Bazel 8.7.0 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

• Fix launcher/launcher_maker for cross build, e.g. build windows binary on linux machine. (#29240)

External Dependencies

• package_group now supports labels with external repositories in the packages attribute (#28896).
• Added SOCKS proxy support. Bazel now accepts socks://, socks4://, and socks5:// URLs in HTTPS_PROXY/HTTP_PROXY environment variables and related system properties. (#29305)
• Adds the strip_components attribute to extract/download_and_extract/http_archive to allow stripping of path components when extracting files. (#29367)

Remote Execution

• Bazel now has experimental support for --rewind_lost_inputs, which can rerun actions within a single build to recover from (remote or disk) cache evictions. (#28971)
• Added --experimental_remote_cache_chunking flag to read and write large blobs to/from the remote cache in chunks. Requires server support. (#28900)

Starlark / Build Language

• string.splitlines() no longer treat u+0085 as a newline character when internal_starlark_utf_8_byte_strings is set (which defaults to true) (#28932)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, H5-O5, Jacob Nowjack, Justin Won, Keith Smiley, Mike Lundy, Sarad Pant, and Will Stranton.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.1.0 (2026-04-20)

Bazel 9.1.0 is a minor LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

CLI

• Reporting of cached test results can now be suppressed with --test_summary=short_uncached or --test_summary=detailed_uncached. (#29263)

Configurability

• Fix launcher/launcher_maker for cross build, e.g. build windows binary on linux machine. (#29239)

External Deps

• 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. (#28616)
• package_group now supports labels with external repositories in the packages attribute. (#28893)
• rctx.symlink now implicitly watches the target if it falls back to a copy. (#28741)
• The local and remote repo contents cache now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29195)
• The remote repo contents cache now supports all reproducible repo rules. (#29225)

Remote Execution

• Bazel now has experimental support for --rewind_lost_inputs, which can rerun actions within a single build to recover from (remote or disk) cache evictions. (#28958)
• Added --experimental_remote_cache_chunking flag to read and write large blobs to/from the remote cache in chunks. Requires server support. (#28903)

Starlark / Build Language

• string.splitlines() no longer incorrectly treats u+0085 (NEL) as a newline character (#28931)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Armando Montanez, ashutosh0x, Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, H5-O5, Joseph Gette, Keith Smiley, Paul Tarjan, Ted Kaplan, Tyler French, and Will Stranton.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.1.0rc3 (2026-04-15)

Bazel 9.1.0 is a minor LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

CLI

• Reporting of cached test results can now be suppressed with --test_summary=short_uncached or --test_summary=detailed_uncached. (#29263)

Configurability

• Fix launcher/launcher_maker for cross build, e.g. build windows binary on linux machine. (#29239)

External Deps

• 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. (#28616)
• package_group now supports labels with external repositories in the packages attribute. (#28893)
• rctx.symlink now implicitly watches the target if it falls back to a copy. (#28741)
• The local and remote repo contents cache now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29195)
• The remote repo contents cache now supports all reproducible repo rules. (#29225)

Remote Execution

• Bazel now has experimental support for --rewind_lost_inputs, which can rerun actions within a single build to recover from (remote or disk) cache evictions. (#28958)
• Added --experimental_remote_cache_chunking flag to read and write large blobs to/from the remote cache in chunks. Requires server support. (#28903)

Starlark / Build Language

• string.splitlines() no longer incorrectly treats u+0085 (NEL) as a newline character (#28931)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Armando Montanez, ashutosh0x, Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, H5-O5, Joseph Gette, Keith Smiley, Paul Tarjan, Ted Kaplan, Tyler French, and Will Stranton.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.1.0rc2 (2026-04-14)

Bazel 9.1.0 is a minor LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

Configurability

• Fix launcher/launcher_maker for cross build, e.g. build windows binary on linux machine. (#29239)

External Deps

• 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. (#28616)
• package_group now supports labels with external repositories in the packages attribute. (#28893)
• rctx.symlink now implicitly watches the target if it falls back to a copy. (#28741)
• The local and remote repo contents cache now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29195)
• The remote repo contents cache now supports all reproducible repo rules. (#29225)

Remote Execution

• Bazel now has experimental support for --rewind_lost_inputs, which can rerun actions within a single build to recover from (remote or disk) cache evictions. (#28958)
• Added --experimental_remote_cache_chunking flag to read and write large blobs to/from the remote cache in chunks. Requires server support. (#28903)

Starlark / Build Language

• string.splitlines() no longer incorrectly treats u+0085 (NEL) as a newline character (#28931)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Armando Montanez, ashutosh0x, Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, H5-O5, Joseph Gette, Keith Smiley, Paul Tarjan, Ted Kaplan, Tyler French, and Will Stranton.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.1.0rc1 (2026-04-09)

Bazel 9.1.0 is a minor LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

Configurability

• Fix launcher/launcher_maker for cross build, e.g. build windows binary on linux machine. (#29239)

External Deps

• 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. (#28616)
• package_group now supports labels with external repositories in the packages attribute. (#28893)
• rctx.symlink now implicitly watches the target if it falls back to a copy. (#28741)
• The local and remote repo contents cache now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29195)
• The remote repo contents cache now supports all reproducible repo rules. (#29225)

Remote Execution

• Bazel now has experimental support for --rewind_lost_inputs, which can rerun actions within a single build to recover from (remote or disk) cache evictions. (#28958)
• Added --experimental_remote_cache_chunking flag to read and write large blobs to/from the remote cache in chunks. Requires server support. (#28903)

Starlark / Build Language

• string.splitlines() no longer incorrectly treats u+0085 (NEL) as a newline character (#28931)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Armando Montanez, ashutosh0x, Boleyn Su, Fabian Meumertzheim, H5-O5, Joseph Gette, Keith Smiley, Paul Tarjan, Ted Kaplan, Tyler French, and Will Stranton.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.0.2 (2026-04-09)

Bazel 9.0.2 is a patch LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

• Include both windows and unix files in embedded_zipper_sources (#29235)
• The local and remote repo contents caches now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29194)
• Fixed launcher/launcher_maker for cross platform builds. (#29238)
• Correctly cross-jlink Windows arm64 builds (#29012)
• Make include verification aware of Windows case-insensitivity (#29214)
• Fix infinite spin-wait and missing cancellation propagation in TaskDeduplicator. (#28990)
• Treat RUNFILES_TREE_MARKER as a directory in `BuildEvent.forArtifact()`. (#29010)
• Allow platform-specific startup bazelrc flags. (#29251)

Acknowledgments

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

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.0.2rc3 (2026-04-09)

Bazel 9.0.2 is a patch LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

• Include both windows and unix files in embedded_zipper_sources (#29235)
• The local and remote repo contents caches now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29194)
• Fixed launcher/launcher_maker for cross platform builds. (#29238)
• Correctly cross-jlink Windows arm64 builds (#29012)
• Make include verification aware of Windows case-insensitivity (#29214)
• Fix infinite spin-wait and missing cancellation propagation in TaskDeduplicator. (#28990)
• Treat RUNFILES_TREE_MARKER as a directory in `BuildEvent.forArtifact()`. (#29010)
• Allow platform-specific startup bazelrc flags. (#29251)

Acknowledgments

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

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.0.2rc2 (2026-04-07)

Bazel 9.0.2 is a patch LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

• Include both windows and unix files in embedded_zipper_sources (#29235)
• The local and remote repo contents caches now include the host OS and CPU architecture in the cache key. (#29194)
• Fixed launcher/launcher_maker for cross platform builds. (#29238)
• Correctly cross-jlink Windows arm64 builds (#29012)
• Make include verification aware of Windows case-insensitivity (#29214)
• Fix infinite spin-wait and missing cancellation propagation in TaskDeduplicator. (#28990)
• Treat RUNFILES_TREE_MARKER as a directory in `BuildEvent.forArtifact()`. (#29010)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Boleyn Su and Fabian Meumertzheim.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.

Release 9.0.2rc1 (2026-04-02)

Bazel 9.0.2 is a patch LTS release. It is fully backward compatible with Bazel 9.0 and contains selected changes by the Bazel community and Google engineers.

IMPORTANT

Compatibility Note: CcInfo removal and rules_go

If you encounter the error "The CcInfo symbol has been removed", this is due to an intentional change in Bazel 9 regarding C++ Starlarkification. While this change was present in 9.0.0, a bug fixed in 9.0.1 (#28360) now correctly surfaces this error instead of failing silently or with a confusing message. To fix this, please upgrade rules_go, rules_nodejs or any broken rulesets. For example,

# Add repo_name = None if you don't directly depend on them.
bazel_dep(name = "rules_go", version = "0.59.0") 
bazel_dep(name = "rules_nodejs", version = "6.7.3")

OSS

• Correctly cross-jlink Windows arm64 builds (#29012)

Performance

• Make include verification aware of Windows case-insensitivity (#29214)

Remote Execution

• Fix infinite spin-wait and missing cancellation propagation in TaskDeduplicator. (#28990)
• Treat RUNFILES_TREE_MARKER as a directory in `BuildEvent.forArtifact()`. (#29010)

Acknowledgments

This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as Fabian Meumertzheim.

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

Some versions of Bazel contain a bundled version of OpenJDK. The license of the bundled OpenJDK and other open-source components can be displayed by running the command bazel license. The vendor and version information of the bundled OpenJDK can be displayed by running the command bazel info java-runtime. The binaries and source-code of the bundled OpenJDK can be downloaded from our mirror server.

Security: All our binaries are signed with our public key 3D5919B448457EE0.