Configuration

Bzl is configured in a manner similar to bazel itself: either by command line flags or an rcfile(s).

Command Line flags

Refer to the CLI documentation for a complete reference. For example:

$ bzl serve --address=":4567"   # change the host/port(s) for network binding

Configration file ~/.bzlrc

The optional file ${HOME}/.bzlrc can be used to configure flags. The file format is similar to bazel itself having the form COMMAND --list --of --flags.

# Change the base directory where bzl caches files
common --base_dir=/tmp/bzl

The location of the .bzlrc file can be overridden via the BZL_RC_FILE environment variable.

Editor Integration

The UI allows you to open files in your preferred editor/IDE. By default, this is configured for vscode. To adjust this, please change the following in your ~/.bzlrc file:

common --open_command='code --goto {FILE}:{LINE}:{COLUMN}'  # vscode
common --open_command='gvim +{LINE} {FILE}'                 # vi
common --open_command='emacsclient +{LINE} {FILE}'          # emacs
common --open_command='idea {FILE} --line {LINE}'           # intellij
common --open_command='atom {FILE}:{LINE}:{COLUMN}'         # atom
common --open_command='subl {FILE}:{LINE}:{COLUMN}'         # sublime

• The string {FILE} will be replaced with the actual filename or dirname.
• The string {LINE} will be replaced with the desired line number.
• The string {COLUMN} will be replaced with the desired column number.

Note that this only works with an editor command that does not block (for example, ‘vi’).

GitHub Integration

As various times bzl makes calls to the GitHub API. You can experience API request limits without additional configuration of your github credentials. A recommended configuration to address this:

export GITHUB_USERNAME=<PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN>
export GITHUB_PASSWORD=x-oauth-basic

Visit https://github.com/settings/tokens to allocate a personal access token.

Logging / Debugging

You can set the environment variable LOG_LEVEL to warn, info, or debug to get additional contextual logging.

More selective “per-service” logging can be enabled via the syntax LOG_LEVEL={SERVICE_NAME}=debug. The service names canbe discovered by running with LOG_LEVEL=debug.