How to disable rules_java_builtin?

[grepwood]

Hello. I'm upgrading from Bazel 6.5.1 to 7.6.1. I don't have the time right now to migrate to Bzlmod, so I'm still using Workspace. What's more, even if I find the time, I will have to write my own registry, because the environment I work in is airgapped - we can only download anything through Artifactory. Internet access is completely restricted.

As such, I have to write a bunch of patches for anything that tries to download another thing, so the addresses always come from Artifactory. This time I found myself unable to proceed with the update, because Bazel has a builtin rules_java that uses original addresses. I'm 100% fine maintaining the patch set. How do I disable rules_java_builtin?

[Wyverald]

Is it possible for you to use --experimental_downloader_config? You should be able to rewrite all download URLs to Artifactory that way.

[grepwood]

Today I've sat down over this and indeed, this is extremely helpful. Experimental downloader config takes care of rewriting URLs, but there's one more issue I haven't mentioned in my original post. Another use case for patching rules_java is to accomplish 2 things:

• cut codepaths that let Bazel select Java older than the 2 latest LTS major releases (workplace policy)
• cut all codepaths that let Bazel select a JVM that's not compliant with workplace license requirements; we're only allowed to use RHEL's OpenJDK and Adoptium Temurin, so in letting Zulu stay we are probably gonna get in trouble at the very least with our solution architect

So there's still these use cases that patching can satisfy.

[Wyverald]

@hvadehra @comius for these questions. Note that this is specific to 7.x and WORKSPACE.

[grepwood]

The license hoop I'm very afraid will persist in Bzlmod. I could route Azul URLs to a sinkhole, but what if in doing so I remove all of my options? Please take a look at this: https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_java/blob/043d9760314a57f828d7e6b20898114420adea92/java/bazel/repositories_util.bzl#L18-L89
Azul Zulu seems to hold a firm monopoly on amd64 Linux as far as rules_java is concerned, which puts me at risk of breaking license compliance at work.

[meteorcloudy]

The vendor mode with Bzlmod should make your air-gapped build much easier, see https://bazel.build/external/vendor

With WORKSPACE, you can probably use --override_repository=rules_java_builtin=/my/dummy/rules_java to override it.