Please remove bazel based build infrastructure

[dims]

• it's tough to maintain 2 things in parallel and keep them in sync
• with the switch to go modules/cache, most of the reasons why bazel was used (speed up compilations) are gone
• gets in the way in multiple ways (example, update of golang versions)
• etc...

[cblecker]

/sig release

+1 from me

[justaugustus]

area: everyone
/area build-infra release-eng
/sig release testing
cc: @kubernetes/release-engineering

[k8s-ci-robot]

@justaugustus: The label(s) area/build-infra cannot be applied, because the repository doesn't have them

Details

In response to this:

area: everyone
/area build-infra release-eng
/sig release testing
cc: @kubernetes/release-engineering

Instructions for interacting with me using PR comments are available here. If you have questions or suggestions related to my behavior, please file an issue against the kubernetes/test-infra repository.

[liggitt]

Bazel-related/specific issues:

• hack/update-bazel.sh fails with incompatible RULES_GO_VERSION #88190
• [Flaky Test] Stage #87441
• Some unit tests do not pass locally, but pass in bazel CI #78982
• Automated cherry pick of #88381: update golang.org/x/crypto #88416 (comment)

[justaugustus]

+1000000000
We've had a bunch of Slack threads about this, so thank you @dims for actually turning this into an issue.

Here's the latest thread: https://kubernetes.slack.com/archives/C2C40FMNF/p1582673341098700?thread_ts=1582668769.091500&cid=C2C40FMNF

The #bazel channel is filled with questions like, "How do I do this thing that should be moderately simple to do if it wasn't wrapped in bazel?"

This is a huge maintainability burden, with our limited set of bazel experts being some of the most bandwidth-constrained contributors in the project.

@kubernetes/release-engineering is on board to help tear this down.
Just let us know which threads we need to start pulling on to make this happen.

[SataQiu]

+1 👍

[bartsmykla]

Big +1 from me