Release 8.1.0 - Feb 2025

[iancha1992]

Status of Bazel 8.1.0

• Expected first release candidate date: 2025-02-04
• Expected release date: 2025-02-13
• List of release blockers

To report a release-blocking bug, please add a comment with the text @bazel-io flag to the issue. A release manager will triage it and add it to the milestone.

To cherry-pick a mainline commit into 8.1.0, simply send a PR against the release-8.1.0 branch.

Task list:

• Create release candidate
• Check downstream projects
• Create draft release announcement
• Push the release and notify package maintainers
• Update the documentation
• Update the release page

[iancha1992]

Just FYI, the branch cut for release-8.1.0 will happen on 12/20 (Friday). Thanks

[iancha1992]

Bazel 8.1.0rc1 is now available for those that want to try it out.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/8.1.0rc1
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=8.1.0rc1.

Please test it out and report any issues here as soon as possible.
An early draft of the release notes can be found here.

Thanks!

[iancha1992]

Bazel 8.1.0rc2 is now available for those that want to try it out.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/8.1.0rc2
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=8.1.0rc2.

Please test it out and report any issues here as soon as possible.
An early draft of the release notes can be found here.

Thanks!

[iancha1992]

Bazel 8.1.0rc3 is now available for those that want to try it out.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/8.1.0rc3
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=8.1.0rc3.

Please test it out and report any issues here as soon as possible.
An early draft of the release notes can be found here.

Thanks!

[yuzhy8701]

Hi @iancha1992 - could you help cherrypick 0937e35 to the 8.1 release?

I'm not sure if it's possible to cherrypick it to bazel 7 as well (since there doesn't seem to be a 7.5.1 release right now, and we should upgrade anyways).

[iancha1992]

Bazel 8.1.0rc4 is now available for those that want to try it out.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/8.1.0rc4
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=8.1.0rc4.

Please test it out and report any issues here as soon as possible.
An early draft of the release notes can be found here.

Thanks!