Does bazel theoretically allow http requests inside bazel build rules?

Question

Is there any possibility to write http requests in starlark build rule or via some executable invoked by ctx.actions.run ?

I know it can be done with bazel test (inside test runners), but can it be done in build phase? I know this goes against network sandboxing (but lets say we turn it off)

Answer 1

You can set execution_requirements to include requires-network.

Some notes:

• The network requests are only within actions, they can't be run from Starlark itself
• Bazel won't know to rerun actions that depend on network requests if the remote information has changed. There would need to be a way to make an action always run, which hasn't been decided on: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/3041