November 2023 Summaries

In the absence of official adoption numbers from Google for Bazel, a year-long analysis has estimated a 56% increase in the number of companies using the build and test tool, rising from approximately 600 to 950 companies. Despite Bazel's lack of built-in telemetry and the bureaucratic hurdles preventing the release of user data, the analysis employed a methodology similar to one used for the Angular JavaScript framework, relying on the number of distinct active users of the documentation site as a proxy. The analysis involved cross-referencing two lists of companies known to use Bazel, calculating the overlap, and extrapolating to estimate the total number of users. This growth is significant for individuals and businesses considering investments in the Bazel ecosystem, as well as for institutional investors looking at potential revenue models based on Bazel's enterprise usability.

Before Bazel, teams often used Docker Compose for managing test workflows that included building Docker images, launching containers, and executing test runners, but transitioning these processes to Bazel can be challenging. Two main approaches are outlined: "Bazel on the inside," which retains existing scripts while integrating Bazel commands, and "Bazel on the outside," which uses Bazel as the primary orchestrator, providing a more idiomatic solution that addresses several drawbacks of the former approach. The latter involves significant refactoring but offers benefits such as hermetic builds and improved portability, using tools like the testcontainers library to manage container lifecycles. Practical examples include using Bazel to test applications with mock AWS environments through localstack, avoiding real cloud interactions and enhancing test efficiency and reliability. The author expresses intentions to further develop related tools and invites collaboration for projects that could benefit from such advancements.