Java Native Interface (JNI) rules for Bazel

rules_jni is a collection of Bazel rules for applications and libraries that mix Java/JVM and C/C++ code via the Java Native Interface (JNI) or the Java Invocation API.

Currently, the rules cover the following use cases for mixed Java and native application or libraries that are currently not covered by the native Bazel rules:

• building a native library for multiple platforms
• bundling a native library in a deploy JAR and loading the correct version at runtime
• access to the OS-specific JNI headers, even when cross-compiling or during multi-platform builds
• using the Java Invocation API to create or attach to a JVM, both with a Bazel-provided JDK and without Bazel

Setup

If you are MODULE.bazel, add the following to your MODULE.bazel:

bazel_dep(name = "rules_jni", version = "<latest release>")
# Alternatively, to keep using the repository as @fmeum_rules_jni, use:
bazel_dep(name = "rules_jni", version = "<latest release>", repo_name = "fmeum_rules_jni")

Otherwise, add the following snippet to your WORKSPACE:

load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/repo:http.bzl", "http_archive")

http_archive(
    name = "fmeum_rules_jni",
    sha256 = "<sha of the release tarball>",
    strip_prefix = "rules_jni-<latest release>",
    url = "https://github.com/fmeum/rules_jni/archive/refs/tags/v<latest release>.tar.gz",
)

load("@fmeum_rules_jni//jni:repositories.bzl", "rules_jni_dependencies")

rules_jni_dependencies()

Documentation

See the documentation for targets, rules and workspace macros provided by rules_jni.

Examples

See tests/native_loader for an example of how to use rules_jni to create, package and use a native library from Java. An example of a C++ application that starts a JVM and loads and executes Java code from its Bazel runfiles using the Java Invocation API can be found in tests/libjvm_stub.

Compatibility

rules_jni requires at least Bazel 6. For advanced use cases such as multi-platform native libraries, enabling --incompatible_enable_cc_toolchain_resolution is required (default in Bazel 7+).

Multi-language coverage

rules_jni supports the generation of combined Java and C/C++ coverage reports for projects using {cc,java}_jni_library and @fmeum_rules_jni//jni:libjvm. This feature currently has the following limitations:

• Only LLVM-based coverage toolchains with llvm-profdata are supported.
• When using the Java Invocation API to start a JVM from native code, @fmeum_rules_jni//jni:libjvm has to be used rather than @fmeum_rules_jni//jni:libjvm_lite and rules_jni_init has to be called.
• All jars on the classpath of a JVM started with JNI_CreateJavaVM have to be deploy jars.

To enable this feature, add the following lines to your project's .bazelrc:

# Always required.
coverage --combined_report=lcov
coverage --experimental_use_llvm_covmap
coverage --experimental_generate_llvm_lcov

# These flags ensure that the auto-configured C++ toolchain shipped with Bazel
# uses clang and the LLVM coverage tools. They may not be needed or have to be
# adapted if using a custom toolchain.
coverage --repo_env=CC=clang
coverage --repo_env=BAZEL_USE_LLVM_NATIVE_COVERAGE=1
coverage --repo_env=GCOV=llvm-profdata

Then, collect coverage and use genhtml to generate an HTML report:

bazel coverage //...
genhtml bazel-out/_coverage/_coverage_report.dat

Projects using rules_jni

• Jazzer: A coverage-guided, in-process fuzzer for the JVM.