Support naming JAR files with embedded versions

[kayasoze]

It would ease integration with other Java tools if java_library() were enhanced to take an optional version string, e.g.:

java_library(
  name = "foo",
  version = "1.1",
)

This would produce foo-1.1.jar rather than foo.jar. This avoids having to rename the library when the version changes. I realize that bind() can be used for this as well, but it's less convenient, as the WORKSPACE file must also be modified.

Embedding all versions in the WORKSPACE has its plusses: it may nice to have all the version information in one place. However, it may not be a scalable approach for embedding versions in JAR file names.

[kchodorow]

There are already a couple mechanisms that you can use for this, but why do you want it? You can already avoid renaming the library by calling it "foo".

[kayasoze]

I am not aware of any way to name a library "foo" but have the resulting JAR be named "foo-x.y.jar", where x.y is an arbitrary version number. The motivation is to allow publishing to a Maven artifactory.

[kchodorow]

Oh, then can you do something like:

def artifactory_artifact(name, version, srcs, deps = [], visibility = None):
  native.java_library(name = name, srcs = srcs, deps = deps, visibility = visibility)
  native.genrule(
     name = "artifactory-%s" % name,
     outs = ["%s-%s.jar" % (name, version)],
     srcs = ["lib%s.jar" % name],
     cmd = "cp $< $@",
)

[kayasoze]

Thanks!