gazel not putting dependencies into WORKSPACE

[justinsb]

I followed the instructions in the README, but gazelle does not add any of my dependencies to the WORKSPACE file. I don't know how to diagnose this - I can't see any options for verbose logging etc.

> go install k8s.io/kops/util/...

> gazelle -go_prefix k8s.io/kops/util

>  bazel build //channels/cmd/channels
...
ERROR: /home/justinsb/k8s/src/k8s.io/kops/util/channels/cmd/channels/BUILD:3:1: no such package '@io_k8s_kubernetes//pkg/api/v1': error loading package 'external': The repository named 'io_k8s_kubernetes' could not be resolved and referenced by '//channels/cmd/channels:go_default_library'.
...

WORKSPACE is unchanged - no dependencies:

git_repository(
    name = "io_bazel_rules_go",
    remote = "https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go.git",
    tag = "0.4.1",
)
load("@io_bazel_rules_go//go:def.bzl", "go_repositories")

go_repositories()

[justinsb]

(I'm pretty sure this is something odd about my repo, but I also just don't see any way to diagnose it.)

[pmbethe09]

Actually you are doing nothing wrong.
Gazelle does not edit your WORKSPACE, just generate your build files. It is up to you to update your WORKSPACE with any remote dependencies.

There is a tool that mostly works called wtool,
https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go/tree/master/go/tools/wtool
but it is not perfect, so I haven't advertised it in the main doc.

In this case after gazelle, you would build and see this issue, then run:
wtool io_k8s_kubernetes

And try again, note this may require mutliple iterations, or you can build '-k' and add multiple repos at a time, but it is still a slightly annoying process.

[jayconrod]

Having Gazelle update the WORKSPACE with missing dependencies would be pretty useful though. I can work on that soon.

[pmbethe09]

That gets tricky. How do you know which dependencies are missing?
You encounter @io_k8s_kubernetes and @com_github_golang_protobuf and read the following WORKSPACE file (ignoring Go stuff):

load("@io_bazel_rules_go//proto/go_proto_repositories.bzl", "go_proto_repositories")
go_proto_repositories()

You would have to transitively load go_proto_repositories() from a remote repo to discover that it provides @com_github_golang_protobuf, and therefore only @io_k8s_kubernetes should be added to the WORKSPACE.

It is for this reason that I haven't added this functionality to gazelle, and wrote the quick & dirty wtool, which does not do transitive loading, but rather requires you to decide to run
wtool io_k8s_kubernetes in this situation.

[jayconrod]

Good point, Skylark evaluation makes this a lot harder.

[justinsb]

Oh thanks for the fast response & the course-correction! The README says:

By default, Gazelle will add external dependencies to your WORKSPACE file. If you prefer to use vendoring, run gazelle with -external vendored. See Vendoring.md.

Not sure if I am parsing that first sentence wrong?

[justinsb]

(Trying wtool now though, but any issues there would be a separate issue I'd guess!)

[jayconrod]

You are parsing that sentence correctly; that's my mistake. I had some misunderstanding about that earlier. Will correct today.

[justinsb]

No worries, and thank you so much @jayconrod . I'll leave this open for you to track, but feel free to close at will.

wtool is much better than the alternative which is how I was doing it before, so thank you for that tool. For me the biggest painpoint was having to match the git versions to the Godeps, but I think we should probably wait for the dep tool at this point. It also got very confused by com_github_go_openapi_jsonpointer and by in_gopkg_yaml_v2, but still a vast improvement over doing it by hand!

[jayconrod]

Migrating old Gazelle issues to the new repository. This one is bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle#56.