Unrecoverable error when referencing external repository

Hi there,

I’ve set up a local_repository in our WORKSPACE file, and would like to leverage bind to prevent having to change the BUILD files.

From the documentation, it seems I should be able to do something like the following:

bind( name = “grpc”, actual = “@grpc//:grpc”, )

local_repository( name = “grpc”, path = “third_party/google/grpc”, )

And the BUILD dependency should become: “//external:grpc” whereas it was previously “//third_party/google/grpc:gprc”.

However, if I try to do this, I hit the following exception:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unrecoverable error while evaluating node 'CONFIGURED_TARGET://lb:ip-forwarder-main eeab51cc7d46801c1a05a5f646430553 (936318221 375452941)' (requested by nodes 'CONFIGURED_TARGET://lb/testing:ip_forwarder_test eeab51cc7d46801c1a05a5f646430553 (1211325356 375452941)')
    at com.google.devtools.build.skyframe.ParallelEvaluator$Evaluate.run(ParallelEvaluator.java:438)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.concurrent.AbstractQueueVisitor$WrappedRunnable.run(AbstractQueueVisitor.java:501)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.packages.NonconfigurableAttributeMapper.get(NonconfigurableAttributeMapper.java:45)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.bazel.rules.BazelRuleClassProvider$BazelPrerequisiteValidator.isTestOnlyRule(BazelRuleClassProvider.java:266)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.bazel.rules.BazelRuleClassProvider$BazelPrerequisiteValidator.validateDirectPrerequisiteForTestOnly(BazelRuleClassProvider.java:252)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.bazel.rules.BazelRuleClassProvider$BazelPrerequisiteValidator.validate(BazelRuleClassProvider.java:196)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.RuleContext$Builder.validateDirectPrerequisite(RuleContext.java:1954)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.RuleContext$Builder.createTargetMap(RuleContext.java:1626)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.RuleContext$Builder.build(RuleContext.java:1465)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.ConfiguredTargetFactory.createRule(ConfiguredTargetFactory.java:245)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.analysis.ConfiguredTargetFactory.createConfiguredTarget(ConfiguredTargetFactory.java:176)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.skyframe.SkyframeBuildView.createConfiguredTarget(SkyframeBuildView.java:491)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.skyframe.ConfiguredTargetFunction.createConfiguredTarget(ConfiguredTargetFunction.java:1094)
    at com.google.devtools.build.lib.skyframe.ConfiguredTargetFunction.compute(ConfiguredTargetFunction.java:251)
    at com.google.devtools.build.skyframe.ParallelEvaluator$Evaluate.run(ParallelEvaluator.java:373)
    ... 4 more

Environment info

• Operating System: Ubuntu 14.04

• Bazel version (output of bazel info release): up to git commit ID 54223b019817c329d7bff1c174d497ef3d64695a

[kchodorow]

The most troubling thing with this is that it looks impossible to find out what the offending twice-used name is (none of my own’s project targets conflict with the gRPC ones). @kchodorow is there a, potentially hackyish, way to find that out?

It should be a dependency of the target named in the error. E.g., above, the error message says Unrecoverable error while evaluating node 'CONFIGURED_TARGET://lb:ip-forwarder-main, so you’d look at //lb:ip-forwarder-main’s deps. Does that help narrow it down?

Could you be more explicit as to why you discourage the use of bind? As far as I can see bind is very often required to fix up naming differences of the targets of the same second-degree dependency between two different first-degree dependencies.

There is a fairly long discussion on #1952.

[dslomov]

Dupilcate of #3676