To create a new workspace, you can now simply create an empty WORKSPACE file in a directory.

Previously, you'd need to copy or symlink the tools directory into your project, which was unpopular:

Miguel Alcon came up with a great idea for making this process simpler. Now the compile.sh script will create a .bazelrc file in your home directory which tells Bazel where compile.sh was run from and, thus, where it can find its tools when you build.

To use this new functionality, get the latest version of the code from Github, run ./compile.sh, and then create a Bazel workspace by running touch WORKSPACE in any directory.

Some caveats to watch out for:

• If you move the directory where Bazel was built you will need to update your ~/.bazelrc file.
• If you would like to use different tools than the ones compile.sh finds/generates, you can create a tools/ directory in your project and Bazel will attempt to use that instead of the system-wide one.

See the getting started docs for more info about setting up your workspace.

Let us know if you have any questions or issues on the mailing list or GitHub.