Initial Bazel build definition

[odisseus]

How to:

• Build all sources

bazel build //...

• Run all tests

bazel test //...

• Run the demo

bazel run //src/main/java/io/ipfs/api/demo:demo

TODO:

• Create a target for building the distribution JAR
• Clean up the remains of the Ant and Maven build definitions

Questions:

• How to set up artifact publishing?
• Is it possible to import java-multiaddr etc. as source repositories instead of importing the published JARs?

[cstamas]

Aside of Ant and Maven adding Bazel too? What is the intent here?

[odisseus]

Bazel is better suited for a project that releases multiple artifacts which depend on each other (such as multibase ← multihash ← multiaddr ← http-client). This particular example shows that the sources for these inter-dependent artifacts don't even have to live in the same repository (although it is definitely easier to work with them if they do).

Bazel has its own disadvantages: the build definitions are more complicated than e.g. Maven, and the IDE support is not as good. However, the Bazel ecosystem has seen a lot of changes in the past two years, and this concept might be worth revisiting.