source filenames containing colons

[nickbreen]

Description of the bug:

Bazel cannot process source files with filenames that contain colons.

What's the simplest, easiest way to reproduce this bug? Please provide a minimal example if possible.

touch "foo:bar.baz"
touch WORKSPACE
tee BUILD <<EOF
genrule(
	name = "colons",
	srcs = glob(["*.bar"]) # or literally, which cannot be differentiated from a label ["foo:bar.baz"],
	outs = ["colons.txt"],
	cmd = """find > $@""",
)
EOF

bazel build //:colons

Error:

BUILD:1:8: //:colons: invalid label 'foo:bar.baz' in element 0 of attribute 'srcs' in 'genrule' rule: invalid label 'foo:bar.baz': absolute label must begin with '@' or '//'
ERROR: package contains errors: 
ERROR: package contains errors: : //:colons: invalid label 'foo:bar.baz' in element 0 of attribute 'srcs' in 'genrule' rule: invalid label 'foo:bar.baz': absolute label must begin with '@' or '//'
ERROR: Skipping '//...': Error evaluating '//...': error loading package '': Package '' contains errors

Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

Fedora 36

What is the output of bazel info release?

release 6.0.0

If bazel info release returns development version or (@non-git), tell us how you built Bazel.

N/A

What's the output of git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse master; git rev-parse HEAD ?

N/A

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

Possibly a duplicate of this issue #374

Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

No response

[nickbreen]

There is apparently a work-around by Using labels to reference directories.

E.g.

genrule(
    name = "foo",
    srcs = ["some/directory/."],   # note the slash-dot suffix.
)

[brandjon]

This is a limitation of label syntax (see LabelValidator.java). Extending Labels to support more characters or nearly arbitrary bytes is a long-standing issue; see #374.