Build artifacts are missing with "--remote_download_toplevel" cache option

[loshca]

Description of the problem / feature request:

Assume we have two targets, one dependency of another:

genrule(
    name = "echo", 
    outs = ["echo.txt"],
    cmd = "echo \"something\" > $@",
)

genrule(
    name = "cat",  
    srcs = [":echo"],
    outs = ["cat.txt"],
    cmd = "cat $(locations :echo) > $@",
)

If we get cat target from cache with --remote_download_toplevel: bazel build cat --disk_cache=D:\bazel_disk_cache --remote_download_toplevel, then we will not be able to get output for echo with bazel build echo --disk_cache=D:\bazel_disk_cache --remote_download_toplevel. Instead we got an up to date message and that's it, bazel-bin/echo.txt is not presented :

INFO: Invocation ID: d8e174cf-83cd-49bf-9f51-3367241fd6e1
INFO: Analyzed target //:echo (0 packages loaded, 0 targets configured).
INFO: Found 1 target...
Target //:echo up-to-date:
  bazel-bin/echo.txt
INFO: Elapsed time: 0.153s, Critical Path: 0.01s
INFO: 1 process: 1 internal.
INFO: Build completed successfully, 1 total action

What operating system are you running Bazel on?

Windows & MacOS

What's the output of bazel info release?

4.0.0

[loshca]

Probably we need a little bit more complicated logic with shouldTrustRemoteArtifacts.

[coeuvre]

IIUC, in your example, the second command for echo is ran right after the first one for cat. In this case, the ActionCache checked that no change between these two commands so the action will not be re-executed. Since downloading outputs only happens within action execution, the output of echo will not be downloaded.

This is a known issue and I am working on it. #12665

[mikasun7]

@coeuvre Hi, I have encountered the same problem, is there any workaround?

load("//tools/docker:web.bzl", "web_container")
load("@npm//vite:index.bzl", "vite")

package(default_visibility = ["//visibility:public"])

_package_segments = len(package_name().split("/"))

vite(
    name = "build",
    outs = ["dist"],
    ...
)
web_container(
    name = "frontend",
    dist = [":build"],
)

error log:

ERROR: /data/xxx/BUILD.bazel:8:14: output 'xxx/dist' was not created

I tried to add tags = ["no-remote"] to the vite rule, and build with --experimental_allow_tags_propagation to get around the problem, but this target can't use the remote cache anymore. Once I change the tags to no-remote-exec (remote-cache enabled), bazel will not download outputs dist to bazel-out and the problem will be reproduced.

Thanks.