The lack of backwards compatibility between Bazel versions has been the deal-killer for me thus far. Old build instructions should work with newer releases of the same tools. It's important for the tools to remain compatible because you can't change the instructions contained in old releases.

I hope the release of 1.0 is an indication that Bazel is taking interface stability more seriously.

Right. Every time I build tensorflow I have to build bazel first, or get the bazel version for the tf version.

I have to say, having used a number of Google's tools over the years: basel, coral sdk, maps api and perhaps others, I'm always surprised at how 'how ya doing' the experience is. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate their tools and its openness, but I wish Google spend a bit more time doing software engineering, and less throwing shit against a wall ascertaining stickiness.

This is fixed now: https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/commit/991aec351b57...

If you use Bazelisk (https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk), you'll automatically get the matching Bazel version for TensorFlow in the future (and all other projects that have adopted the .bazelversion file).