[Bug]: Various issues running examples on windows

[peakschris]

What happened?

There are various issues when running the example repo on Windows. It would be nice to fix these and give a better starting experience.

Various linters/formatters don't work:

• clang-tidy/clang-format don't have windows target preconfigured
• buf fails
• etc

Issues due to lack of windows support in other bazel modules

• bash lint.sh --fix //src:hello_cc fails on windows due to missing node.bat:

FATAL: aspect_rules_js[js_binary]: node wrapper '/d/udu/b/l2x2bhay/execroot/_main/./external/aspect_rules_lint~/lint/private/patcher_node_bin/node.bat' not found

• bazel run //docs:update_10 fails:

Target //docs:update_10 failed to build
Use --verbose_failures to see the command lines of failed build steps.
ERROR: Analysis of target '//docs:update_10' failed; build aborted: Target //docs:update_10 is incompatible and cannot be built, but was explicitly requested.
Dependency chain:
    //docs:update_10 (2bc110)
    //docs:clang-tidy-docgen.md (2bc110)
    //docs:clang-tidy (2bc110)   <-- target platform (@@local_config_platform//:host) didn't satisfy constraint @@platforms//:incompatible

Issues local to examples repo

• example/.bazeliskrc causes builds to fail as aspect-cli doesn't support windows. A workaround is to delete this file.
• example/.bazelversion causes builds to fail as bazelisk doesn't support ../ notation. A workaround is to copy the parent .bazelversion into examples.
• lint.sh only returns a single target result, see [Bug]: lint.sh stops on first issue on Windows #178
• jq isn't installed by default on windows. This command grabs it: curl -L -o jq.exe https://github.com/stedolan/jq/releases/latest/download/jq-win64.exe

Version

Development (host) and target OS/architectures:

Output of bazel --version:

7.1.1

Version of the Aspect rules, or other relevant rules from your
WORKSPACE or MODULE.bazel file:

rules_lint latest

Language(s) and/or frameworks involved:

all

How to reproduce

Clone repo on windows
cd example
set BAZEL_SH=c:\msys64\usr\bin\bash.exe
get jq.exe
bazel test //...

Any other information?

No response

[peakschris]

multitool PR: bazel-contrib/rules_multitool#45
toolchains_llvm PR: bazel-contrib/toolchains_llvm#342

[peakschris]

rules_multirun issue: keith/rules_multirun#56

[albertocavalcante]

I am also impacted by this. Did you have any luck so far @peakschris ?

[peakschris]

I fixed a bunch of things in this and other repos, but some of the fixes didn't get anywhere. We are not currently using rules_lint for this reason. It would be good to have an up-to-date set of issues, could you supply this @albertocavalcante?

[thesayyn]

example/.bazeliskrc causes builds to fail as aspect-cli doesn't support windows

This is not true anymore, https://github.com/aspect-build/aspect-cli/releases/tag/2025.11.0 contains windows builds.

[thesayyn]

Our support for windows is really limited so i am not surprised that there are issues, natural next step for us is to turn on windows CI and try to keep it green.