Remove bazel usage from the repo

[howardjohn]

No other repo in istio uses bazel. As far as I know there is no reason we need bazel here, and it makes the repo unfamiliar for Istio contributors.

If possible we should remove bazel.

I am not familiar enough with bazel to know how feasible this is and if its as simple as rm all_bazel_stuff and replace bazel test with go test, etc

[clarketm]

@howardjohn - I can help with this. Depending on the particular bazel rule we can translate to the equivalent, underlying command (e.g. go_test(...) -> go test ...). Is the desire to replace bazel with make for everything: building, testing, running or just testing?

[clarketm]

@sebastienvas @fejta

Since #1631, it would appear bazel no longer works yet there are still artifacts (i.e. subprojects withBUILD.bazel files like boskos) in the repo that depend on it.

It would be nice to come to a compromise of if or to what extent we want to use bazel in the istio/test-infra repo. At the very least, we should keep it in a healthy state for the components that depend on it.

[howardjohn]

That is exactly why I created #1635, to remove the BUILD.bazel files as they are actively misleading. This change was blocked.

[duderino]

No other repo in istio uses bazel.

istio/proxy does, but it's still OK to remove bazel from istio/test-infra. But let's definitely not remove bazel from istio/proxy ;)

[sebastienvas]

Bazel was used for 2 + years and nobody complained.

I find it really sad. the time gained when working with docker images, and daily workflows for me is priceless. Anyways I am doing one or two contribution a month to fix stuff, so I may not be the standard user. I think @fejta has made some bazel contrib in the last months so He may have more context.

[fejta]

I am opposed to removing bazel usage from this repo

[howardjohn]

Given kubernetes/kubernetes#99561 this seems to be where upstream is moving? Unless k/test-infra will still use bazel

[BenTheElder]

That KEP expressly covers only github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes. Sub-projects will continue to use their preferred tools. I don't think there's currently a movement to change any other repos.

[howardjohn]

Ack, thanks Ben.