Build fails with Bazel 9: proto_library and cc_proto_library not defined

[travisdowns]

Problem

Building with Bazel 9 (the current default installed by bazelisk) fails because proto_library and cc_proto_library are no longer native rules in Bazel 9:

$ bazel build src:perf_to_profile
ERROR: /home/user/perf_data_converter/src/BUILD:170:1: name 'proto_library' is not defined
ERROR: /home/user/perf_data_converter/src/BUILD:175:1: name 'cc_proto_library' is not defined

This affects both src/BUILD (lines 170, 175) and src/quipper/BUILD (lines 23, 29, 35, 41, 47, 55) which use these rules without load() statements.

Root Cause

Bazel 9 removed proto_library and cc_proto_library from the set of natively available rules. They now need to be explicitly loaded, e.g.:

load("@com_google_protobuf//bazel:proto_library.bzl", "proto_library")
load("@com_google_protobuf//bazel:cc_proto_library.bzl", "cc_proto_library")

Similarly, src/quipper/BUILD uses cc_library, cc_binary, and cc_test without load() statements, which may also break in future Bazel versions.

Workaround

Adding a .bazelversion file with 8.2.1 pins bazelisk to Bazel 8 and restores a working build. See PR linked below.

Full Fix

The BUILD files should be updated to add explicit load() statements for all Starlark rules to be compatible with Bazel 9+.

[s-kanev]

Sorry this took a second. #194 should fix it the proper way. We've also updated our internal CI to work with bazel 9.0 and catch things like this earlier.

[travisdowns]

@s-kanev wrote:

Sorry this took a second. #194 should fix it the proper way. We've also updated our internal CI to work with bazel 9.0 and catch things like this earlier.

No worries, I had only closed above as I read later in the README that PRs are not accepted for this project :).

Thanks for the fix!